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SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 



SCENES AND THOUGHTS 
IN EUKOPE. 



GEOKGE H? CALVERT, 

AUTHOR OF "THE GENTLEMAN." 



FIEST SERIES. 



A NEW EDITION. 



BOSTON: 
LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY. 

1863. 



J7 9 /<? 






/$rc3 



Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1863, by 

George H. Calvert, 

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Rhode Island. 



By transfer 

». 8, Soldiers Home Lib. 

MAR 18 1938 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
STEREOTYPED AND PRINTED BY H. 0. HOUGHTON. 



PREFACE. 



/CERTAIN classes of books are such favorites, 
that the responsibility of publishing them 
should be borne by the public. The eagerness 
with which they are read is a premium on their 
production. The traveller in foreign lands finds 
the privacy of his letters and journal encroached 
upon, while writing them, by the thought that they 
may be turned into " copy" for the printer. To 
so many others has this happened, that the possi- 
bility of its happening to himself cannot be kept 
out of his mind, spotting, it may be, the candor of 
his statements. Afterwards, when he has been at 
home long enough for the incidents of his journey 
to grow by distance of time into reminiscences, 
what he wrote on the spot comes upon him with 
unexpected freshness and distinctness. Himself 
gets information and entertainment from the peru- 
sal of his notes, letters, and diary. In this state 



5229 



vi PREFACE. 

of semi-self-complacency, the public urgently in- 
vites him to its broad tables, — invites him through 
the kindness wherewith it has loaded so many of 
his book-blazoned fellow-travellers. He begins to 
criticise his manuscript ; to shape it by excisions, 
by additions ; to calculate quantity ; to confer with 
a popular publisher, — who is of course in close 
league with the public, — until at last he finds 
that his manuscript has been made away with, and 
in its stead he has proof-sheets. His private 
doings, and seeings, and thinkings, and feelings, 
are about to cease to be private and to become 
public, and himself is to be thrust in every page 
personally before the world by the printers. He 
is in the case to claim the favor that is shown at a 
feast to a guest especially summoned for the enter- 
tainment of the company. The host is the public, 
whose part it is to bear with his waywardness, to 
be indulgent towards his shortcomings, to overlook 
his deficiencies. The author of the following little 
volume scarcely need add, that this claim of the 
author-guest is strong in proportion as he possesses 
the virtue, the rare virtue, of brevity. 

March, 1846. 



CONTENTS. 
« 

PAGE 

I. Wordsworth 9 

II. Lancaster — Warwick Castle — Strat- 
ford on Avon — Oxford — London 

— Coleridge 18 

III. Leamington — Aristocracy — Carlyle 27 

IV. Havre — Rouen — Paris — Moliere — 

Rachel — French Tragedy— French 
Literature 34 

V. Napoleon's Funeral — French Revolu- 
tions — Louis Philippe . . .47 

VI. Belgium — Antwerp 52 

VII. Good Society — Aristocracy. . .57 

VIII. Brussels — Prussian Frontier — The 

Rhine 64 

IX. The Water-Cure 72 

X. Frankfort — Goethe — Heidelberg — 
Baden-Baden — Strasburg— Schaff- 
hausen — Switzerland — The Righi 

— Lucerne — Berne — Geneva . . 94 



viii CONTENTS. 

PAGB 

XI. Valley of the Rhone — The Simplon 

— Italy — An Incident — Milan — 
Genoa — Lucca 110 

XII. Florence — Scientific Congress— Cli- 

mate — Occupations and Pastimes 

— Music — Art— Society — Painting 
and Sculpture 124 

XLH. Greenough — Powers — Clevinger . 140 

XIV. Petrarca — Macchiavelli — The Medici 

Alfieri — Dante 159 

XV. Back to Switzerland and the Rhine 
for the Summer — Pass of the St. 
Gothard 172 

XVI. Return to Italy — Munich — Innspruck 

— Verona — Venice — Ferrara — 
Florence — Pisa 181 

XVU. Rome 188 



SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

FIRST SERIES. 

I. 

Wordsworth. 

npHREE weeks since, I was in America : I am 
-*- now, Wednesday morning, July 29th, 1840, 
writing from Ambleside, in Westmoreland county, 
an English village, distant but a mile from the 
dwelling of Wordsworth. Between noon and even- 
ing we have come to-day ninety miles ; first by 
railroad from Liverpool to Lancaster, where we 
took outside seats on a coach to Kendall, and 
thence by post-chaise fourteen miles to Ambleside. 
An American, just landed in England, wants more 
than his two eyes to look at the beautiful, green 
" old country." For several miles the road lay 
along the bank of Lake Windermere, sleeping in 
the evening shadows, at the feet of its mountains, 
whose peaks were shrouded in mist, except that of 
Nabscar, on whose southern side near its base 
stands the poet's house. 

So soon as we were established in the clean 



10 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

little inn, I walked out, towards eight o'clock, on 
the road that passes Wordsworth's door. Meeting 
a countryman, when I had been afoot ten or fifteen 
minutes, I asked him, "How far is it to Mr. 
Wordsworth's ? " " Only a quarter of a mile." 
The wood-skirted road wound among gentle hills, 
that on one side ran quickly up into mountains, so 
that the house was not in view; and having re- 
solved not to seek him till to-morrow, I turned 
back with the tall laborer, who told me he was 
working at Wordsworth's. We passed a lady and 
gentleman on foot, who both gave a friendly sal- 
utation to my companion. " That," said he, " is 
Mr. Wordsworth's daughter." 

Thursday Evening. — This morning, at ten, 
Nabscar still wore his nightcap of mist, but as the 
wind then hauled, in sailor's phrase, to the north 
from the southwest, which is the rainy quarter 
here, he was robed before noon in sunshine, to 
welcome on his breast a far-travelled homager. 

I spent an hour to-day with Wordsworth. His 
look, talk, and bearing, are just what a lover of his 
works would wish to find them. His manner is 
simple, earnest, manly. The noble head, large 
Roman nose, deep voice, and tall spare figure, 
make up an exterior that well befits him. When 
I entered the house his daughter was reading to 
him as he lay on a sofa in the library. On my 
coming into the room he rose hastily, like one who 



WORDSWORTH. H 

had been caught, but received me courteously and 
not as an unwelcome interrupter. He had on 
dark trousers and a short morning-coat of green 
tartan. He talked freely on topics that naturally 
came up. 

He soon proposed that we should walk out into 
his grounds. What a sight for a poet's abode ! 
One more beautiful the earth can scarcely offer. 
A few acres give shifting views of the paradise 
about him, embracing the two lakes of Winder- 
mere and Grasmere. In hearty English he 
summed up the characteristics of the bounteous 
scene ! We passed a small field of newly cut hay, 
which laborers were turning; — "I have been at 
work there this morning," said Wordsworth, " and 
heated myself more than was prudent." In the 
garden a blackbird ran across our path : " I like 
birds better than fruit," said he ; " they eat up 
my fruit, but repay me with songs." 

We had not been long within doors again when 
Wordsworth was summoned to lunch. On my 
rising to take leave he invited me to lunch with 
him, and as I continued my movement for depart- 
ure, he repeated the invitation so cordially that I 
accompanied him into the dining-room, where Mrs. 
Wordsworth awaited him. Mr. Wordsworth, she 
said, did not ordinarily take lunch, but he was to 
dine out late that day. As I was to dine early I 
declined joining in the meal. Wordsworth directed 



12 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

my attention to a large solid carved press or side- 
board that stood in one corner of the room, of 
walnut, and from age as black as ebony, having 
been for many generations in the family, and bear- 
ing on its front for three hundred years in high 
relief his own full name. Mrs. Wordsworth recom- 
mended him to take a glass of porter, to which he 
showed some reluctance. I seconded her wish by 
offering to open the bottle, which I accordingly 
did, and had the hearty satisfaction of playing 
Ganymede to the poetic Jupiter of contemporary 
England, drawing the cork and then pouring out 
for him a full glass of the foaming British nectar. 
When the short lunch was finished I took leave of 
him, bearing with me an invitation, in which Mrs. 
Wordsworth joined, for Mrs. C. and myself to tea 
on the following evening. 

Saturday, August 1st. — Yesterday evening 
we spent three hours at Rydal Mount, the name, 
not of the mountain near whose base is Words- 
worth's dwelling, but of the dwelling itself. We 
went, by request, early. Wordsworth, soon after 
we arrived, familiarly took me through the back 
gate of his enclosure, to point out the path by 
which I might ascend to the top of Nabscar, — a 
feat I purposed attempting the next day. Scott's 
novels being mentioned, Wordsworth said that he 
had not read more than two or three of them. As 
he was saying this he caught up at the branch of 



WORDSWORTH. 13 

an apple-tree, under which we were passing, as if 
a physical motion were a help, or a cover, to the 
utterance.* On our return, he proposed a visit to 
Rydal Fall, a few hundred yards from his door in 
Eydal Park. Learning that, five weeks since, we 
had stood before Niagara, an exclamation burst 
from his lip, as if the sublime spectacle were sud- 
denly brought near to him. " But come," said 
he, after a moment, " I am not afraid to show you 
Rydal Fall, though you have so lately seen Niag- 
ara." As for part of the way he walked before 
us in his thick shoes, his large head somewhat in- 
clined forward, occasionally calling our looks to 
tree or shrub, I had him, as he doubtless is in his 
solitary rambles for hours daily, in habitual medi- 
tation, greeting as he passes many a flower and 
" sounding bough," and pausing at times from self- 
communion to bare his mind to the glories of sky 
and earth which ennoble his chosen abode. 

At the end of our walk a short descent brought 
us to the door of a small, stone, wood-embowered 
structure, the vestibule, as it were, to the temple. 
Entering, the waterfall was before us, beheld 
through a large oblong opening, or sashless win- 
dow which made a frame to the natural picture. 
The fall was not of more than twenty-five feet, and 
the stream only a large brook, but from the hap- 

* This passage and several others of the chapter were omitted 
in the first edition, Wordsworth being then still alive. — [1863.] 



14 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

piest conjunction of water, rock, and foliage, of 
color, form, sound, and sylvan still life, resulted a 
scene, decked by nature so choicely, and with 
such delicate harmony, that you felt yourself in 
one of Beauty's choice abiding-places. The deep 
voice of Wordsworth mingled at intervals with the 
sound of the fall. We left the spot to return to 
his house. The evening was calm and sunny ; we 
were in an English park in the bosom of moun- 
tains ; we had come from a spot sanctified by 
Beauty; and Wordsworth walked beside us. 

The walls of the drawing-room and library, con- 
nected by a door — in which, with the affable kind- 
ness of a refined gentlewoman, Mrs. Wordsworth 
received ourselves and a few other guests — 
were covered with books and pictures. Words- 
worth showed me several editions of the British 
Poets. He put into my hands a copy of the first 
edition of Paradise Lost, given him by Charles 
Lamb. He spoke copiously, and in terms of admi- 
ration, of Alston, whom he had known well. In 
connection with Alston, he mentioned his " friend 
Coleridge." The opportunity thus offered of lead- 
ing him to speak of his great compeer, was marred 
by one of the company giving another turn to the 
conversation. 

Wordsworth, throughout the evening, was in a 
fine mood. His talk was clear and animated, at 
times humorous. He narrated several lively inci- 



WORDSWORTH. 15 

dents with excellent effect. We sat in the long 
English twilight till past nine o'clock. 

Sunday Morning. — Yesterday was pleasantly 
filled in making an excursion to Conistone Lake, 
in rowing on Windermere, and in strolling in the 
evening through the meadows around Ambleside. 
At every pause in our walk, the aspect of the 
landscape varied, under the control of the chief 
feature of the scenery, the encircling mountains 
with their vast company of shadows, which, as 
unconsciously changing your position you shift the 
point of view, open or close gorges and valleys, 
and hide or reveal their own tops, producing the 
effect of a moving panorama. 

But a week since, we were on the ocean, — a 
month since, in the New World, — now, on the 
beaten sod of the Old, — young Americans enjoying 
old England. Every object within sight, raised 
by the hand of man, looks touched with antiquity : 
the gray stone wall with its coping of moss, the 
cottage, ivy-screened, the Saxon church-tower. 
Even what is new, has not a new look. The mod- 
ern mansion is mellowed by architecture and tint 
into keeping with its older neighbors. To be old 
here, is to be respectable, and time-honored is the 
epithet most coveted. You see no sign of the 
doings of yesterday or yesteryear : the new is 
careful of obtruding itself, and comes into the 
world under matronage of the old. But the foot- 



16 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

print of age is not traced in rust and decay. We 
are in free and thriving England, where Time's 
accumulations are shaped by a busy, confident, 
sagacious hand, man coworking with Nature at 
the "ceaseless loom of Time," so that little be 
wasted and little misspent. The English have a 
strong sympathy with rural nature. The capabil- 
ities of the landscape are developed and assisted 
with a loving judicious eye, and the beautiful 
effects are visible not merely in the lordly domain 
or secluded pleasure-ground, where a single mind 
brings about a predetermined end, but in the gen- 
eral aspect of the land. The thatched cottage, 
the broad castle, the simple lawn, the luxurious 
park, the scattered hamlet, the compact borough, 
all the features which make up the physiognomy 
of woody, mossy, rain-washed England, harmonize 
with nature and with one another. 

Sunday Afternoon. — We walked this morning 
to Rydal Church, which is within almost a stone's 
throw of Wordsworth's dwelling. Through a 
cloudless sky and the Sabbath stillness, the green 
landscape looked like a corner of Eden. In the 
small simple church there were not more than sixty 
persons, the congregation, as Wordsworth told us 
afterwards, consisting of fourteen families. When 
the service was over, Wordsworth, taking us one 
under each arm, led us up to his house. As, after 
a short visit, we took our final leave, he accompanied 



WORDSWORTH. 17 

us, to let us see — what he had, he said, permission 
to show — the plot around the cottage of an adjoin- 
ing neighbor, a retired corporal, I think. And 
well was it worth the showing by a poet, — a sward 
so. fine and close and soft and compact, that you 
had to stoop to verify with fingers that it was 
grass. The ground partly undulated, the rock 
cropping out in places, and the whole shone in a 
deep green satin, wrought by culture and care out 
of the natural fibre as it grew. Besides other 
delicate handling and nurture, it was cut every 
three days with shears. 

In these three days I have spent several hours 
at different times with Wordsworth. I have lis- 
tened to his free and cordial talk, walked with him, 
beheld the beautiful landscape of Westmoreland 
with the aidance of his familiar eye, and have 
been the object of his hospitality, more grateful 
to me than would be that of his sovereign. The 
purpose of our visit to Ambleside being accom- 
plished, we leave this in half an hour. 



II. 



Lancaster — Warwick Castle — Stratford on Avon — • 
Oxford — London — Coleridge. 

Oxford, Wednesday Morning, August 5th. 

A GLANCE at the map of England will show 
-*"*- what a flight we have made since Sunday. 
For most of the way it was literally a flight, being 
chiefly by steam. Yet have we had time to tarry 
on the road, and give ourselves up tranquilly with- 
out hurry to deep and gentle impressions. 

Leaving Ambleside on Sunday afternoon, our 
road ran for ten miles along the eastern shore of 
Lake Windermere, which lay shining at our side, 
or sparkling through the foliage that shades the 
neat dwellings on its border. From the mountains 
of the lake region we passed suddenly into the 
flats of Lancashire, and at dark reached Lancas- 
ter, too late to get a good view of, — what we had 
however seen as we went up from Liverpool, — the 
castle, founded by 

" Old John of Gaunt, time-honoured Lancaster." 

Between nine and three o'clock on Monday, a rail- 
road bore us from Lancaster, on the northwest 



TRAVELLING IN ENGLAND. 19 

coast, to Coventry (which Falstaff marched through) 
in Warwickshire, the very heart of England. We 
passed through, but did not stop at Birmingham. 
The sight and thought of these great, overworked, 
underfed workshops are disheartening. An invalid 
has not the nerves to confront the gaunt monster 
Poverty, that, dragging along its ghastly offspring 
Squalor and Hunger, stalks so strangely through 
this abundant land. 

There is nothing like a " locomotive " for giving 
one a first vivid view of a country. Those few 
hours left on my brain a clear full image of the 
face of England, such as can be had by no other 
means. Town, river, village, cottage, castle, set 
all in their native verdure, are so approximated by 
rapidity of movement, as to be easily enclosed by 
the memory in one frame. The ten miles between 
Coventry and Warwick, a stage-coach carried us 
on its top, passing through Kenilworth village, and 
giving us a glimpse of the famous ruins. 

Beautiful to behold is England on a sunny sum- 
mer's day ; so clean, so verdant, so full of quiet 
life, so fresh, wearing so lightly the garland of 
age. What a tree ; — that cottage, how fragrant 
it looks through its flowers ; — the turf about that 
church has been green for ages. Here is a 
thatched hamlet, its open doors lighted with rosy 
faces at the sound of our wheels ; — this avenue 
of oaks sets the imagination to building a mansion 



20 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

at the end of it. What town is that clustered 
around yon huge square tower ? and the ear wel- 
comes a familiar name, endeared by genius to the 
American heart. Such is a half hour of one's 
progress through time-enriched England, the 
mother of Shakspeare and Cromwell, of Milton 
and Newton. 

Yesterday morning we walked to Warwick Cas- 
tle, which lies just without the town. There stands 
the magnificent feudal giant, shorn of its terrors ; 
its high embattled turrets disarmed by Time's 
transmuting inventions ; its grim frowns converted 
to graceful lineaments ; its hoarse challenges to 
gentle greetings ; there it stands, grand and ven- 
erable, on the soft green bank of Avon, guarded 
by man's protecting arm against the levelling 
blasts of antiquity, not less a token of present 
grandeur than a monument of former glories. As 
slowly as the impatient attendant would let us, we 
loitered through the broad lofty halls and comfort- 
able apartments, from whose walls flash the bright 
heads of Vandyke. Through the deep windows 
you look down into the Avon, which flows by the 
castle and through the noble park. We lingered 
on the green lawn, enclosed within the castle-walls, 
and in the smooth grounds without them, and we 
hung about the towers of the dark old pile until 
noon, when we walked back to the inn, having 
enjoyed without drawback, and with more than 



STRATFORD ON AVON. 21 

fulfilment of cherished expectations, one of the 
grandest spectacles old Europe has to offer. 

At one we were approaching Stratford on Avon, 
distant eight miles from Warwick. Fifteen years 
since I was on the same ground. But Shakspeare 
was to me then but a man to whom greatness had 
been decreed by the world's judgment. I was not 
of an age to have verified for myself his titles : 
I had not realized by contemplation the immensity 
of his power : my soul had not been fortified by 
direct sympathy with his mighty nature. But now 
I felt that I was near the most sacred spot in Eu- 
rope, and I was disappointed at the absence of 
emotion in my mind. Here Shakspeare was born, 
and here he lies buried. We stood above his 
bones : on the marble slab at our feet, we read the 
lines touching their rest, invoking a curse on him 
who should disturb them. We sat down on a 
bench within a few feet of the sacred dust. We 
walked out by a near door past tombstones to the 
edge of the Avon. The day was serene and 
bright. We returned, and gazed again on the 
simple slab. It was not till we had quitted the 
church, and were about to pass out of the yard, 
that a full consciousness of the holiness of the 
place arose in me. For an instant I seemed to 
feel the presence of Shakspeare. We walked 
slowly back towards the inn. In this path he has 
walked ; at that sunny corner he has lounged ; — 



22 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

but it was like clutching at corporeal substance in 
a dream, to try to call up a familiar image of Shaks- 
peare. Objects around looked unsubstantial ; 
what the senses beheld wore the aspect of a vision ; 
the only reality was the thought of Shakspeare, 
which wrapped the mind in a vague magical sen- 
sation. 

Between three and four o'clock we were on the 
way to Oxford, smoothly rolling over an undulating 
road, under a cloudless sky, through the teeming, 
tree-studded fields. We passed through Wood- 
stock, and for several miles skirted the Park of 
Blenheim. It was nearly dark when we entered 
Oxford. The coach whirled us past square upon 
square of majestic piles and imposing shapes, and 
we alighted at the inn, suddenly impressed with 
the architectural magnificence of Oxford. 

London, August 10th, 1840. — From the top 
of the coach, which carried us eight miles to the 
Great Western Railroad, I looked back upon the 
majestic crown of towers and spires, wherewith — 
as if to honor, by a unique prodigality of its gifts, 
the high, long-enduring seat of learning — the 
genius of architecture has encircled the brow of 
Oxford. At a speed of thirty to forty-five miles 
an hour we shot down to Windsor, where we again 
quitted the railroad for a post-chaise, wishing to 
enter London more tranquilly than by steam. 

By the road from Windsor it is hard to say when 



LONDON. 23 

you do enter London, being encased by houses 
miles before you reach Piccadilly. Some cities 
are begirt with walls, some with public walks, some 
merely with water ; but London, it may be said 
without solecism, is surrounded by houses. At 
last the "West End" opens grandly to view 
through Hyde Park. What a look of vastness, 
of wealth, of solid grandeur! We are passing 
the house of Wellington ; and there to the right, 
across the Green Park and St. James's, are the 
towers of Westminster Abbey. We are in the 
largest and wealthiest city of the world, the cap- 
ital of the most vast and powerful empire the 
earth has ever known. 

We can now give but a few days to London, 
barely enough to get a notion of its material di- 
mensions and outward aspects. Size, activity, 
power, opulence, fill with confused images the 
wearied brain when the stranger's laborious day 
is over. The streets of London seem intermi- 
nable ; its private palaces are countless ; its popu- 
lation consists of many multitudes. Through its 
avenues flow in counter-currents, from morn till 
midnight, the streams which send and receive 
from the ends of the earth the life-blood of a 
commerce which all climes and continents nour- 
ish. From within its precincts issue words, that, 
sped to the four quarters of the globe, are laws 
to more than one hundred millions of men. 



24 SCEXES AXD THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Thither are the ears of States directed ; and when 
in the Senate, that for ages has had its seat in 
this still growing capital, the Prime Minister of 
England speaks, all the nations hearken. Of the 
wealth, strength, bulk, grandeur of the realm, 
London is the centre and palpable evidence. See 
the docks in the morning, and drive round the 
parks in the afternoon, and you behold the might 
and magnificence of Britain. 

From this endless throng I was withdrawn yes- 
terday to a scene, a sketch of which will have, for 
many, especial interest. I drove to Highgate Hill, 
and alighted at the house of Mr. Gilman. From 
the servant who opened the door I learnt that he 
had been dead several months. Mrs. Gilman was 
at home. I was shown into a neat back drawing- 
room, where sat an elderly lady in deep mourning. 
I apologized for having come to her house : it was 
my only means of getting tidings of one I had 
known well many years before in Gottingen, and 
who, I was aware, had been a friend and pupil of 
Mr. Coleridge during his stay under her roof. 
She made a sign to the servant to withdraw, and 
then gave way to her emotion. " All gone, all 
gone ! " were the only words she could at first 
utter. My friend had been dead many years, 
then Coleridge, and lastly her husband. I was 
much moved. Mr. Watson had been a son to 
her : to have been intimate with him was a favor- 



COLERIDGE. 25 

able introduction to herself. She showed me sev- 
eral of Mr. Gilman's books, filled with notes in 
Coleridge's handwriting, from which are taken 
many passages of the " Remains." In another 
room was his bust ; and in another a fine picture 
by Alston, given by him to his great friend. She 
put into my hands a sonnet in manuscript, written 
and sent to her by Alston, on the death of Cole- 
ridge, — a cordial and beautiful tribute of genius 
to genius. 

In the third story is the chamber opened by the 
most cordial and honorable friendship to the illus- 
trious sufferer, and by him occupied for many 
years. There was the bed whereon he died. 
From the window I looked out over a valley upon 
Caen Wood. Here, his lustrous eyes fixed in de- 
vout meditation, Coleridge was wont to behold the 
sunset. Mrs. Gilman tired not of talking of him, 
nor I of listening. I thought, how happy, with 
all his chagrins and disappointments, he had been 
in finding such friends : with what affection and 
hearty thankfulness he speaks of them. They 
could sympathize with the philosopher and the 
poet, as well as with the man. Mrs. Gilman's 
talk told of converse with one of England's rich- 
est minds. To me it was a bright hour ; and with 
feelings of more than esteem for its lonely inmate, 
I quitted the roof where, in his afflicted old age, 
the author of Christabel had found a loving shelter. 



26 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

In a few* moments I was again in the whirl of the 
vast metropolis. I shall bear away from it no 
more vivid or grateful recollection than that of 
yesterday's visit. Few men have had more genius 
than Coleridge, more learning, or more upright- 
ness, and in the writings of none is there more 
soul. His poetry will live with his language. As 
a prose writer, he is a conscientious seeker of 
truth, a luminous expounder of the mysteries of 
life ; and the earnest student of his pages, without 
accepting either his Theology, or his Philosophy, 
or his Politics, finds himself warmed, instructed, 
and exalted. 



III. 

Leamington — Aristocracy — Carlyle. 

HHOWARDS the middle of August, we left Lon- 
-■- don for Leamington in Warwickshire, where 
we remained for a month. There are times when 
one can neither write nor even read. I begin to 
fear that I shall not have many moods for work in 
Europe. To say nothing of health, one's mind is 
constantly beset by superficial temptations. All 
kinds of trifling novelties importune the attention. 
And even when settled for weeks in the same lodg- 
ing, one is ever possessed by the feeling of insta- 
bility. 

My reading at Leamington has been chiefly of 
newspapers. - From them, however, something may 
be learnt by a stranger. They reflect the surface 
of society ; and as surfaces mostly take their 
shape and hue from depths beneath them, one may 
read in newspapers somewhat more than they are 
paid for printing. Even the London " Satirist," 
that rankest sewer of licentiousness, has a social 
and political significance. It could only live in 
the shade of an Aristocracy. The stomach of 
omnivorous scandal were alone insufficient to digest 



28 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

its gross facts and fabrications. The peer is 
dragged through a horse-pond for the sport of the 
plebeian. The artisan chuckles to see princes and 
nobles wallowing in dirt, in print. The high are 
brought so low that the lowest can laugh at them : 
the proud, who live on contempt, are pulled down 
to where themselves can be scorned by the basest. 
The wit consists chiefly in the contrast between 
the elevation of the game and the filthiness of the 
ammunition wherewith it is assailed, between the 
brilliancy of the mark and the obscurity of the 
marksman. A register is kept of bishops, peer- 
esses, dukes, ambassadors, charged with being 
swindlers, adulterers, buffoons, panders, syco- 
phants ; and this is one way of keeping English- 
men in mind that all men are brothers. It is a 
weekly sermon, suited to some of the circum- 
stances of the times and people, on the text — 
" But many that are first shall be last." 

England looks everywhere aristocratical. A 
dominant idea in English life is possession by in- 
heritance. Property and privilege are nailed by 
law to names. A man, by force of mind, rises 
from lowliness to a dukedom : the man dies, but 
the dukedom lives, and lifts into eminence a dullard 
perhaps, or a reprobate. The soul has departed, 
and the body is unburied. Counter to the order 
of nature, the external confers, instead of receiv- 
ing life ; and whereas at first a man made the 



ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY. 29 

dukedom, afterwards it is the dukedom that makes 
the man. Merit rises, but leaves behind it gen- 
erations of the unmeritorious not only to feed on 
its gains, but to possess, places that should never 
be filled but by the deserving. In an hereditary 
aristocracy the privileged families form knots on 
the trunk of a nation, drawing to themselves sap 
which, for the public health, should be equally dis- 
tributed. Law and custom attach power and 
influence to names and lands : whoso own these, 
govern; and so rigid and cherished are primogeni- 
ture and entail, that much of them is possessed 
without an effort or a natural claim. The pos- 
sessor's whole right is arbitrary and artificial. 

To ascribe the shortcomings of England to the 
aristocratic principle, were as shallow as to claim 
for it her many glories. In her development it 
has played its part according to her constitutional 
temperament ; but her development has been 
richer and healthier than that of her neighbors, 
because her aristocracy has had its roots in the 
people, or rather because (a false aristocracy hav- 
ing been hitherto in Europe unavoidable) her peo- 
ple have been manly and democratic enough not 
to suffer one distinct in blood to rear itself among 
them. Compare English with any other aristoc- 
racy, and this in it is notable and unique ; it does 
not form a caste. It is not, like the German, or 
Russian, or Italian, a distinct breed from that of 



30 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

the rest of the nation ; nay, its blood is ever re- 
newed from the veins of the people. This is the 
spring of its life ; this has kept it in vigor ; this 
strengthens it against degeneracy. It sucks at 
the breast of the mighty multitude. Hence at 
bottom it is, that the English peer is in any part 
of the world a higher personage than the German 
count or Italian prince. He cannot show pedi- 
grees with them, and this, a cause of mortification 
to his pride, is the very source of his superiority. 

From this cause, English aristocracy is less far 
removed than any other in Europe from a genuine 
aristocracy, or government of the best ; of which, 
however, it is still but a mockery. It is not true 
that all the talent in the realm gravitates towards 
the House of Lords, but some of it does ; and as 
such talent is, of course, in alliance with worldly 
ambition, the now homines in Parliament are apt 
not to be so eminent for principle as for intellect. 
Until men shall be much purer than they have yet 
been, no nation will, under any form of polity, 
throw up its best men into high places. The work- 
ing of the representative system with us has re- 
vealed the fact, that with free choice a community 
chooses in the long run men who accurately rep- 
resent itself. Should therefore Utopia lie imbo- 
somed in our future, instead of the present very 
mixed assemblage, our remote posterity may look 
for a Congress that will present a shining level of 



ENGLISH ARISTOCRACY. 31 

various excellence. Only, that should so blessed 
an era be in store, congresses and all other cun- 
ning contrivances called governments will be super- 
fluous. In England, in legislation and in social 
life, most of the best places are filled by men 
whose ancestors earned them, and not themselves. 
These block the way to those who, like their an- 
cestors, are capable in a fair field of winning emi- 
nence. By inheritance are enjoyed posts demand- 
ing talent, liberality, refinement, — qualities not 
transmissible. It is subjecting the spiritual to the 
corporeal. It is setting the work of man, earls 
and bishops, over the work of God, men. The 
world is ever prone to put itself in bondage to 
the external : laws should aim to counteract the 
tendency. Here this bondage is methodized and 
legalized. The body politic has got to be but 
feebly organic. Men are obliged in every direc- 
tion to conform rigidly to old forms ; to reach their 
end by mechanical routine. A man on entering 
life finds himself fenced in between ancient walls. 
Every Englishman is free relatively to every other 
living Englishman, but is a slave to his forefathers. 
He must put his neck under the yoke of prescrip- 
tion. The life of every child in England is too 
rigorously predestined. To him may be addressed 
the words of Goethe, in " Faust " : — 

Es erben sich Gesetz' und Rechte 
Wie eine ew'ge Krankheit fort; 



32 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Sie schleppen von Geschlecht sich zum Geschlechte, 

Und riicken sacht von Ort zu Ort, 

Vernunft wird Unsinn, Wohlthat Plage; 

"Weh dir dass du ein Enkel bist! 

Vom Rechte, das mit uns geboren ist, 

Von dem ist, leider! nie die Frage.* 

This is a rich theme, which I have merely 
touched. It is pregnant too with comfort to us 
with our unbridled democracy. May it ever re- 
main unbridled. 

On the way from Leamington to France we 
were again two days in London, where I then saw 
at his house one of the master-spirits of the age, 
Mr. Carlyle. His countenance is fresh, his bear- 
ing simple, and his frequent laugh most hearty. 
He has a wealth of talk, and is shrewd in speech 
as in print in detecting the truth in spite of con- 
cealments, and letting the air out of a windbeutel. 
Like the first meeting across the seas with a boun- 
tiful worldly benefactor, — except that the feeling 
is much finer, and admits of no gross admixture, — 
is that with a man to whom you have long been 
under intellectual obligations. It is one of the 
heartiest moments a stranger can have abroad. 
The spirit that has been so much with him has 
taken flesh and voice. He grasps for the first 

* Laws and rights are inherited like an everlasting disease ; they 
drag themselves along from generation to generation, and quietly 
move from place to place. Reason becomes* nonsense, blessings 
become curses; woe to thee that thou art a grandchild! Of the 
right that is born with us, of this, alas ! there is no thought. 



CARLYLE; 33 

time the hand of an old friend. When in London 
before, I had a good view of the Duke of Welling- 
ton, as he rode up to his house, at the corner of 
Hyde Park, and dismounted ; so that I have seen 
England's three foremost living men, Wordsworth, 
Wellington, Carlyle. 



IV. 



Havre — Eouen — Paris — Moliere — Rachel — French 
Tragedy — French Literature. 

f\N Friday afternoon, September 11th, at three 
" o'clock, we left London by railroad for South- 
ampton, which we reached at six, and crossing 
the channel by steamboat in the night, entered the 
port of Havre at ten the next morning. The town 
looked dirty at a distance, and is dirtier than it 
looked. The small craft we passed in the harbor 
were unclean and unwieldy. The streets ran filth 
to a degree that offended both eyes and nose. 
Knots of idle shabby men were standing at cor- 
ners, gossiping, and looking at parrots and mon- 
keys exposed for sale. The inn we got into, 
commended as one of the best, was so dirty, that 
we could not bear to face the prospect of a night 
in it. We hired a carriage and started at four 
with post-horses for Rouen, which we reached at 
midnight. Here we spent Sunday. Rouen is 
finely placed on the Seine, with lofty hills about 
it. In the Diligence, in which we started early 
on Monday, to overtake fifteen miles up the river 
the steamboat to St. Germain, I heard a French- 



PARIS. 35 

man say to a Frenchwoman, Rouen est le pot-de- 
chambre de la Normandie. We entered Paris in 
a hard rain at ten o'clock on Monday night. 

The French claim for Paris that it is the most 
beautiful city in the world. From a point on the 
right bank of the Seine, near the bridge leading 
from the Place de la Concorde, is the finest, and 
truly a noble panoramic view. Standing with your 
back to the river, right before you is the Place 
itself, with its glittering fountains and Egyptian 
obelisk. Directly across it, the eye rests on two 
imposing fagades, which form a grand portal to 
the Rue Royale, at the end whereof, less than 
half a mile distant, the Church of the x Madeleine 
presents its majestic front of Corinthian columns. 
On the right the eye runs down the long facade of 
the Rue Rivoli, cut at right angles by the Palace 
of the Tuileries, peering above the trees of the 
Tuileries garden which, with its deep shade and 
wide walks, lies between you and the Palace. To 
the right now of the garden the view sweeps up 
the river, with its bridges and miles of broad quais, 
and ends in a distant labyrinth of building, out of 
which rises the dark head of Notre Dame de 
Paris. Near you on the opposite, that is, the left 
bank of the Seine, and face to face to the Made- 
leine, is the imposing Palais des Elisees Bourbons, 
now the Hall of the Deputies. To the right the 
gardens attached to the Elisees Bourbons and the 



36 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

grounds of the Hotel des Invalides fill the space 
near the river on the left bank, and the Champs 
Misees, at one corner of which you stand, press 
upon its shore on this side, while the view directly 
down the stream stretches into the country. Back 
now through a full circle to your first position, and 
with the Madeleine again in front, on your left are 
the Champs Misees, at the other extremity of 
which, more than a mile off, just out of the Neuilly 
Gate, towers the gigantic Imperial Arch of Tri- 
umph built by Napoleon. But to get the best view 
of this magnificent colossus, you must advance to 
the centre of the Place de la Concorde, where, 
from the foot of the obelisk, with your back to 
the Tuileries, you behold it closing the chief Av- 
enue of the Champs Elisees, and, by the eleva- 
tion of the ground and its own loftiness, standing 
alone, the grandest monument of the French 
capital. 

A rare and most effective combination this, of 
objects and aspects. From no other city can there 
be embraced from a single interior point an equal 
extent, variety, and grandeur. There are similar 
but less striking views from several other open 
spots. 

From the general deficiency of good architect- 
ure, large cities show best when, from the banks 
of a river or broad open squares, they can be be- 
held in long distant masses. Paris gains hereby 



FRENCHMEN. 37 

especially, as, from the habits of the people, not 
only are the streets dirtier than need be, but the 
basements are mostly unsightly and often disgust- 
ing ; and the faces generally, even of massive 
buildings, with architectural pretensions, have an 
unwashed and ragged look. 

A Frenchman, more than other men, is depend- 
ent upon things without himself. Nature and his 
own mind, with domestic interests and recreations, 
are not enough to complete his daily circle. For 
his best enjoyment he must have a succession of 
factitious excitements. Out of this want Paris has 
grown to be the capital of the world for superficial 
amusements. Here are the appliances — multi- 
plied and diversified with the keenest refinement 
of sensual ingenuity — for keeping the mind busy 
without labor and fascinated without sensibility. 
The senses are beset with piquant baits. Whoever 
has money in his purse, and can satisfy through 
gold his chief wants, need have little thought of 
the day or the year. He finds a life all prepared 
for him, and selects it as he does his dinner from 
the voluminous carte of the Restaurant. To live, 
is for him as easy as to make music on a hand- 
organ : with but slight physical eifort from himself, 
he is borne along from week to week and from sea- 
son to season on an unresting current of diversions. 
Here the sensual can pass years without satiety, 
and the slothful without ennui. Paris is the 



38 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Elysium of the idler, and for barren minds a 
Paradise. 

When I first arrived, I went almost nightly to 
some one of the many theatres. I soon tired of the 
smaller, where, mostly, licentious intrigue and fabu- 
lous liberality alternate with farce to keep the 
attention awake through two or three acts of 
commonplace. At the Theatre Frangais, I saw 
Moliere and Rachel. It is no diparagement of 
Moliere to call him a truncated Shakspeare. The 
naturalness, vigor, comic sense, practical insight, 
and scenic life of Shakspeare he has ; without 
Shakspeare's purple glow, his reach of imagination 
and ample intellectual grasp, — which latter supreme 
qualities shoot light down into the former subordi- 
nate ones, and thus impart to- Shakspeare's comic 
and lowest personages a poetic soul, which raises 
and refines them, — the want whereof in Moliere 
makes his low characters border on farce, and his 
highest prosaic. 

Rachel is wonderful. She is on the stage an 
embodied radiance. Her body seems inwardly 
illuminated. Conceive a Greek statue endued with 
speech and mobility, for the purpose of giving 
utterance to a profound soul stirred to its depths, 
and you have an image of the magic union in her 
personations of fervor and grace. Till I heard 
her, I never fully valued the might of elocution. 
She goes right to the heart by dint of intonation ; 



RACHEL. 39 

just as, with his arm ever steady, the fencer deals 
or parries death by the mere motion of his wrist. 
Phrases, words, syllables, grow plastic, swell or 
contract, come pulsing with life, as they issue from 
her lips. Her head is superb ; oval, full, large, 
compact, powerful. She cannot be said to have 
beauty of face or figure ; yet the most beautiful 
woman were powerless to divert from her the eyes 
of the spectator. Her spiritual beauty is there 
more bewitching than can be the corporeal. When 
in the Horaces she utters the curse, it is as though 
the whole electricity of a tempest played through 
her arteries. It is not Corneille's Camille, or Ra- 
cine's Hermione, solely that you behold, it is a 
dazzling incarnation of a human soul. 

Through Rachel I have seen the chefs-d'oeuvre of 
Corneille and Racine, reproduced by her on the 
French stage, whence, since the death of Talma, 
they had been banished. 

Without creation of character, there is no gen- 
uine drama. So vivid and individual should be the 
personages, that out of their feelings and acts the 
drama evolves itself, under the guidance of judg- 
ment and the purification of poetry. Without such 
individuality and productive vitality in the charac- 
ters, poetry, sentiment, action, fail of their effect 
in the dramatic form. The personages of the 
French Theatre are not creations, they are trans- 
plantations. Corneille and Racine took in hand the 



40 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

tragic subjects of antiquity, but they did not re- 
animate them. Agamemnon and Augustus owe 
nothing to their Gallic parents : their souls are not 
swelled with thoughts beyond a Greek or Roman 
age. Measure them with Shakspeare's Coriolanus, 
or Anthony, or Brutus, and they are marrowless. 
Shakspeare has so vivified his Romans, that the 
pages of history, whence they are taken, pale by 
the side of them. 

The French appear not to have had depth 
enough to produce an original tragic drama. The 
tragic material — whereof sentiment is as essen- 
tial an element as passion — is meagre in them, 
compared with the Germans or English ; hence 
the possibility and even necessity of a simpler plot 
and a measured regularity. Corneille or Racine 
could not have wrought a tragedy out of a tradi- 
tion or a modern fable : they require a familiarized 
historical subject. The nature of French tragedy, 
compared with English, is happily illustrated by 
the Hamlet of Ducis, which I have seen played at 
the Theatre Franpais. The title of the piece is, 
" Hamlet, Tragedie en 5 acts, imitee de 1' Anglais 
par Ducis." A fitter title were, " Hamlet, with 
the part of Hamlet left out, by particular desire 
of French taste." It is as much an imitation of 
Shakspeare, as straight walks and parallel lines of 
trees are an imitation of Nature. Hamlet is re- 
solved into a tender-hearted affectionate son. He 



CORNEILLE AND RACINE. 41 

has not been put aside, but is king. Ophelia does 
anything but go mad. The mother is overwhelmed 
with remorse for the murder, which she confesses 
to a confidant. The heart of Hamlet's mystery 
is plucked out. The. poetry is flattened into 
phrases. The billowy sea of Shakspeare is be- 
littled to a smooth pond, in every part whereof 
you can touch bottom. It is not deep enough to 
dive in. 

It is the nature of high poetry to bind the indi- 
vidual to the universal. Corneille and Racine live 
in a middle atmosphere between the two. They 
have not the rich sensibility, which, united on the 
one hand to high reason, reveals to the poet the 
primal laws of being, and on the other with powers 
of minute observation, imparts liveliness to his em- 
bodiments. They are neither minute nor compre- 
hensive ; hence their personages are vague and 
prosaic. The highest quality of their tragedies 
is a refined and skilful rhetoric. Their verse is 
like bass relief ; the parts follow one another in a 
graceful well-joined sequence ; but there is no per- 
spective, no deep vistas, breeding as you pass 
them suggestions and subtle sensations. Their 
personages leave nothing to your imagination ; 
they are terrible egotists ; they do most thor- 
oughly " unpack their souls with words " ; they 
give measured speech to feelings which at most 
should find but broken utterance. 



42 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

French tragedy is not primitive. With labo- 
rious skill their tragic writers recast old materials. 
In Poli/eucte, Corneille throws a deeper line, but 
attains to no greater individuality of characteriza- 
tion, nor is he less declamatory than in his Roman 
pieces. Both he and Racine are more epic than 
dramatic. The French language, moulded by the 
mental character of a nation wanting in depth of 
sensibility, is not a medium for the highest species 
of poetry ; and had Corneille and Racine been 
poets of the first order, they would either have 
re-fused the language, so that it would have flowed 
readily into all the forms forged by the concurrent 
action of sensibility and thought, or, failing in that, 
they would, like Rabelais, have betaken themselves 
to more obedient prose. Moliere had not a highly 
poetic mind, and he wrote verse evidently with 
uncommon ease ; and, nevertheless, I doubt not 
that even to him the Alexandrine was a shackle ; 
and although Corneille and Racine cannot be rated 
among the first class of poets, I think too well of 
them not to believe that by it their flight was 
greatly circumscribed. French verse, which re- 
quires a delicate attention to metre or the mechan- 
ical constituent, affords little scope for rhythm, and 
is therefore a hindrance rather than a furtherance 
to the true poet. In other cultivated languages 
the form meets the substance half-way — is, as it 
were, on the watch for it ; so that the English, or 



FRENCH LITERATURE. 43 

Italian, or German poet, far from being impeded 
by the versification of his thoughts as they rise, 
finds himself thereby facilitated, the metre em- 
bracing the poetic matter with such closeness and 
alacrity as to encourage and accelerate its produc- 
tion and utterance. Hence in French literature 
the poets are not the highest names. Homer, 
Dante, Shakspeare, Goethe, are supreme in their 
respective lands ; not so Corneille or Racine. 

The Frenchman who, as thinker and creator, 
may best claim to rank with the poet-thinkers of 
other nations, did not write in verse. Rabelais 
was a master-mind. His buffoonery and smut are 
justified by Coleridge, as being a necessary vehicle 
in his age for the conveyance of truth. As it was, 
he is said to have owed his liberty and even life 
to the favor of Francis I. I suspect that he was 
naturally so constructed as to wear willingly such 
a mask. His great work presents a whole of the 
most grotesque humor, which may be defined — 
the shadow caused by the light of the spiritual 
falling on the animal through the medium of the 
comic. Rabelais' s full animal nature and broad 
understanding presented a solid and variegated 
mass of the low and corporeal for the sun of his 
searching reason and high spirituality to shine 
upon, and the shadows resulting are broad and 
deep. The two natures of beast and man seem in 
him to measure their strength for the entertain- 



44 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

inent of the Comic, which stands by and sets 
them on. 

Pascal is the only French writer I know in 
whom there is the greatness that results from 
purity and depth, the contact wherewith lifts one 
up and kindles emotions which possess the soul 
like a heavenly visitation, banishing for a time 
whatever there is in one of little or unworthy. 

Carlyle calls Voltaire the most French of French- 
men. I will not do the French the injustice to 
call him the greatest, though doubtless most of his 
contemporaries so esteemed him. He was the 
leader of a generation whose necessary calling was 
to deny and destroy. His country panted under 
a monstrous accumulation of spiritual and civil 
usurpations : he wielded the sharpest axe in the 
humane work of demolition. His powers were 
great and his labors immense ; and yet there were 
in him such deficiencies as to defeat the attain- 
ment of completeness in any one of his various 
literary undertakings. Voltaire had not soul 
enough to put him in direct communication with 
the heart of the Universe. Whatever implied 
emotion, came to him at second-hand, through his 
intellect. He was not a great poet, a creator ; he 
was a great demolishes Let him have thanks for 
much that he did in that capacity. 

I record with diffidence these brief judgments, 
for I have -made no wide and thorough study of 



FRENCH LITERATURE. 45 

French literature. It does not take hold of me : 
it lacks soul. Of the present generation of writ- 
ers I am still less qualified to speak, having read 
but partially of any one of them. They do not 
draw me into intimacy. - It is a peculiarly grate- 
ful state of mind when, on laying down a fresh 
volume, you resolve to possess yourself of all that 
its author has written. You feel like one who has 
found a new friend. I have not yet met with the 
French writer who gives me assurance of this per- 
manent enjoyment. I refer more particularly to 
works belonging to the provinces of creation and 
criticism, else I should mention Thierry, whose 
volume, entitled Lettres sur VHistoire de la France, 
seems to me a masterpiece of historical research 
and political acuteness. The authors whose names 
have lately most sounded abroad, Guizot, Cousin, 
Villemain, want vitality. Their writings, to use a 
phrase of Dr. Johnson, come from reservoirs, not 
springs. Thierry is of a higher order. In La 
Mennais is the will and noble aim, without the 
power and accomplishment. The romantic dramas 
of Hugo and others, simmering with black lawless 
passion, are- opaque as well as shallow, and empty 
of poetry. They have much more sound than 
substance, more fury than force. The new French 
literature is yet to come into being. 

The French beat the world in milliners, in tailors, 
in porcelain, in upholstery, in furniture ; their or 



46 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

molu is unrivalled, so are their mousselines and 
silks ; but not so is their painting, or their sculpt- 
ure, or their music, or their poetry. In the orna- 
mental they are unequalled, but not in the creative. 
Their sphere is the artificial and conventional ; 
their sympathy with nature is not direct and in- 
tense. Their ideal in Art is not the result of a 
warm embrace with nature, but of a methodical 
study of established masters. With their poets 
and artists the aim and motive in labor is too much 
the approval of Paris, where humanity is so bediz- 
ened by artifice, that the smile and melody of 
nature are scarce discernible. 



Napoleon's Funeral — French Kevolutions — Louis 
Philippe. 

SAW Napoleon's funeral, — a showy martial 
-*- pageant, befitting the Imperial soldier. The 
escort was a hundred thousand armed men ; the 
followers, half a million of both sexes. For hours, 
the broad long avenue of the Champs Ely sees was 
choked with the moving throng. It was a solemn 
moment when the funeral car came slowly by. 
There, within a few feet, lay the body of the man, 
the tramp of whose legions had been mournfully 
heard in every great capital of the continent, — 
whose words had been more than the breath of a 
dozen kings. His shrivelled dust passed through 
triumphal arches and columns, emblazoned with 
the record of his hundred conquests. Of them, 
there was nothing left to France but the name ; 
of him, nothing but those cold remains. Not even 
a living member of his line was present, sadly to 
share in this tardy show of honor. The day was 
cold, and so were the hearts of the multitude. 
Those bones, let out of their ocean prison, brought 
with them no hope for the nation. When they are 



48 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

buried, there will be an end of Napoleon. His 
name will hereafter be but a gorgeous emptiness ; 
his memory is not vitalized by a principle. In his 
aims there lay no deep hope, whence his fellow- 
men, battling for rights, might forever draw cour- 
age and strength. While he still lived, his schemes 
were baffled, and what he founded had already 
passed away. His plans were all for himself, and 
hence with himself they fell, and left scarce a 
trace behind.' He gave birth to no great ideas, 
that, fructifying among men, would have built for 
him in their souls an everlasting home. He saw 
not into the depths of truth, and he knew not its 
unequalled might. Therefore, with all his power 
he was weak : naught of what he wished came to 
pass, and what he did with such fiery vehemence, 
with still more startling swiftness was undone. His 
thoughts were not in harmony with the counsels 
of God, and so they perished with himself. The 
Emperor will have his conspicuous place in His- 
tory, but the man will not live in the minds of men. 
For the most potent king of the earth, what is he, 
if he be a false man ? That one so false could so 
rule, is a token of the confusion of the times. 

One looks almost in vain for the spots that were 
the centres of the terrific doings of the Revolu- 
tion. They are mostly so transformed as to have 
lost their identity. Time has been quick in wiping 
out the bloody stains. Whoever wishes to bring 



THE FRENCH PEOPLE. 49 

before his mind, on the ground itself, the place of 
execution, will need an imagination intense enough 
to close the avenues of his senses against the 
garish sights and sounds of the most brilliant pub- 
lic square of this gayest of capitals ; for what is 
now the Place de la Concorde, with its lively gilt 
fountains and rattling equipages, was once the 
Place de la Revolution, where blood streamed daily 
under the axe of the headsman. If, then, he can 
succeed in calling up the guillotine, with its pale 
victims and exulting throng of savage spectators, 
it will be easier for the timid to shudder at its 
butcheries, than for the thinker to solve the prob- 
lem of their permission. Through the tears and 
woes of man, the deep laws of Providence march 
on to their mysterious fulfilment. One may be- 
lieve, that to a people so brutified by tyranny, so 
despoiled of natural rights, was needed the swift- 
est sweep of authority, the broadest exhibition of 
power, the grossest verification of escape from 
bondage, in order to vindicate at last and forever 
their human claim to a will. 

The French people, according to report of those 
who have known them in both periods, are more 
earnest and substantial than they were two genera- 
tions back. They think and feel more, and talk 
less. There must be hope for a nation that could 
erect itself as this did, scatter with a tempest the 
rooted rubbish of ages, overturn half the thrones 



50 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

of Europe, and, though reconquered through the 
very spirit of freedom that at first had made itself 
invincible, once more, at the end of a half-century, 
rend the old reimposed fetters and stand firmly on 
a blood-purchased ground of liberty, — liberty, in 
comparison with its civil and social condition sixty 
years ago. For neither was the second Revolu- 
tion any more than the first the beginning of pop- 
ular rule : it was the condemnation of unpopular 
misrule. The mass of the French people have 
still no direct agency in the government. One of 
the two legislative bodies, the Chamber of Depu- 
ties, is chosen by about two hundred thousand 
electors out of a population that numbers seven 
millions of male adults ; the other, the Chamber 
of Peers, is created by the king, — a monstrous 
anomaly, and an insulting mockery. If the revo- 
lution of the three days was a protest against 
monarchical predominance and military coercion, 
Louis Philippe misrepresents it most flagrantly. 
By the army is he upheld, not by the nation. I 
have seen him, going to open the session of the 
legislature, closely guarded by twenty thousand 
bayonets. What the purpose is of the fortifica- 
tion of Paris, will become palpable in some future 
revolution. If the tens of millions, buried under 
this vast cincture, had been expended upon rail- 
roads radiating from the capital (not to mention 
higher national wants), Paris would have been 



SELF-TRUST. 51 

rendered impregnable, and France greatly for- 
warded in wealth and civilization. The " throne 
surrounded by republican institutions," promised 
by Lafayette when he made Louis Philippe king, 
was the groundless hope of a veteran patriot, too 
single-minded to have forgotten the dream of his 
youth, and too short-sighted to discern how far it 
was then from realization. The fulfilment of the 
promise he confided to one whose mental construc- 
tion was the very opposite of his own. 

The present is a government of bayonets tem- 
pered by the Press. The Press, though not quite 
free, is an immense power, and its growth is a 
measure of French progress in sixty years. The 
people, though far yet from that maturity which 
self-government implies, do not require the semi- 
military rule of the Orleans Dynasty. Yet are 
their bonds not so heavy and tight but that they 
have in some directions quite a wide range of 
movement. And they have a healthful abiding 
consciousness of their power to pull down the 
state, if ever again it should become grossly op- 
pressive. It is utterly incalculable what, by two 
such triumphant efforts as their two revolutions, a 
people gains in self-respect, and self-reliance, and 
hopeful self-trust, the basis of all moral super- 
structure, and therefore of all permanent self- 
government. 



VI. 

Belgium — Antwerp. 

TN northeastern France there is little rural beauty. 
-*- The country looks bald and meagre and lifeless. 
No clumps of trees, nor rose-sweetened cottages, 
nor shady hamlets, betokening snug firesides and a 
quiet sympathy with nature. It was cheering to 
get into Belgium. Here were the marks of a 
deeper order and more intelligent labor. On all 
sides cleanliness and thrift. The sightly, compact 
towns looked full of well-husbanded resources. 
From Courtrai, near the borders of France, to 
Antwerp, we passed, by railroad, for sixty miles 
through what seemed a fair rich garden, so smooth 
and minute is the tillage. The soil looked grate- 
ful to its workers. 

It would almost appear that there had been a 
defeat of Nature's intent in this quarter of Eu- 
rope ; a territory has been split, which was so 
naturally adapted for unity. One cannot help 
thinking it a pity the Burgundian sovereignty 
had not lasted. Where there are now discordant 
French, Belgians, and Dutch, there might have 
been one homogeneous people of eight or ten 



BELGIUM. 53 

millions, with breadth of territory, and strength 
and variety of resources, sufficient for an ample 
national development. Just at the period, towards 
the end of the fifteenth century, when a nation 
was forming and about to be knit together by Lit- 
erature and the Arts, — for which it exhibited such 
aptitude, — the whole country, by the marriage of 
the heiress of the last of the Burgundians, passed 
into the hands of Austria, and thence by Charles 
V. was left to his son, Philip II. of Spain. The 
high spirit of the people would not brook the cruel- 
ties of this tyrant and his creature Alba, who 
wished to establish among them the Inquisition, 
that masterpiece of Satan's most inventive mood. 
In the famous revolt, only the northern provinces 
were successful. Belgium remained under the 
dominion of Spain a century longer, when it was 
retransferred to Austria, from which it was finally 
wrested in the French Revolution, to be first incor- 
porated into France, and then by the Congress of 
Vienna reunited, after a divorce of more than two 
centuries, to Holland. But during that long sepa- 
ration, the two, living under totally different in- 
fluences, had naturally contracted habits that were 
reciprocally hostile. Holland was Protestant; Bel- 
gium, Catholic ; and the language, which, under a 
permanent union, might have been unfolded by the 
wants of a vigorous nation to take rank by the 
side of the cognate German, was broken into dia- 



54 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

lects : that of Holland becoming cultivated enough 
to be the medium of some literature ; that of Bel- 
gium remaining the half-grown speech of the peas- 
ants and Bourgeois, and giving place in salons and 
palaces to the more refined tongue of its overshad- 
owing southern neighbor. It was now too late to 
make one nation of the Netherlands ; and so, the 
marriage, brought about by neighbors through per- 
suasions too well backed by power to be withstood, 
was soon dissolved, and Belgium was erected into 
an independent monarchy, under a new king, by 
the side of Holland, or, I should say, a separate 
monarchy ; for, when united, they had not the 
strength for independence, and now of course will 
even the more readily fall victims of greedy neigh- 
bors, whenever the beam of that very unsteady 
fixture called the balance of power shall be kicked. 
Antwerp has still much of the wealth and beauty 
it inherited from the olden time, when, with its two 
hundred thousand inhabitants, it was, in commerce 
and opulence, the first among the cities of Europe ; 
and its merchant-princes built up cathedrals and 
squares and palaces, for Rubens and Vandyke to 
people out of their procreative brains. The pop- 
ulation is reduced now to seventy or eighty thou- 
sand, the port is content with a hundred vessels at 
a time instead of two thousand ; but the broad 
clean streets bordered with stately mansions are 
still here, and the cathedral, whose spire alone is a 



ANTWERP. 55 

dower for a province ; and the inhabitants, yet 
rich in fat lands and well-filled coffers, are still 
richer in the possession of some of the fairest off- 
spring of their great fellow-townsmen. The potency 
of genius and art is here most forcibly exemplified. 
Take away Rubens and the Cathedral, and Ant- 
werp would not be Antwerp. This tower, stead- 
fast, light, fretted with delicate tracery, springing 
nearly four hundred feet from the ground, which 
it seems to touch no more heavily than a swan 
about to take flight, is an unfading beauty shining 
daily on the hearts of the people, while the mem- 
ory of Rubens and his presence in his gigantic 
handiwork are a perpetual image of greatness. 
To the passing stranger they are an adornment to 
the land, but to the natives a stay and brace to 
the very mind itself, keeping ever before them the 
reality of beauty and power, and fortifying them 
with the consciousness of kindred with genius and 
greatness. 

Antwerp has at this time high artists, Jacobs, 
Keyser, Waeppers, who sit under the transparent 
shadow of this marvellous tower, and whose art 
attains a more juicy maturity in the sun of Rubens's 
genius. Their works sell at high prices as fast as 
they produce them. Love of art, blended in the 
hearts of the people with religion, is an element 
of their nature. The creations of their great 
painters illuminate the churches, and, through the 



56 SCENES AXD THOUGHTS IX EUROPE. 

incense that ascends from the altar, beam upon the 
upturned countenance of the worshipper. In the 
public Museum are preserved some of the best 
works of Rubens and Vandyke ; and in private 
dwellings are seen family portraits from their 
hands, fresh from the embalming touch of genius, 
twice-prized, — by personal and by national pride. 
In a rich private collection of old books and 
pictures, I have seen a set of engravings, bound 
up into several huge tomes of the greater part of 
Rubens' s works. To behold thus at a single view 
the collected product of such a spirit's life, is to 
have in one's hand a key to much of the mystery 
of the painter's art. This man's mind was an ever- 
teeming womb of light-dyed forms. These were 
the spontaneous absorbing growth of his brain. 
With him, existence could only be enjoyed, ful- 
filled, by delivering himself of this urgent brood 
of brain-engendered pictures. What a wealth of 
invention and inexhaustible vigor ! What fertility, 
and boldness, and breadth, and fire ! What opu- 
lence and grandeur of imagination ! What skill 
in the marshalling of his legions ! What life in 
each head, in each figure, in each group ! And 
what a flood of beauty in his coloring ! It is as 
if, for his great pictures, he had gathered into his 
brain the hues of a gorgeous sunset, and poured 
them upon the canvas. 



YIL 

Good Society — Aristocracy. 

A MONG the features wherein old Europe differs 
-^- from young America, none is more prominent 
than the large number of idlers in Europe. Capi- 
tal being wanting in the United States, almost the 
universal energy is busied in supplying it ; in Eu- 
rope it is abundant, and many live in industrial 
unproductiveness upon its moderate dividends. 
With us, it is hardly respectable to be idle ; here, 
only they who are so, enjoy the highest considera- 
tion. With us, gentility is confined to those who 
addict themselves to certain kinds of labor ; in 
Europe it excludes all who labor at all, except in 
the highest offices of the State. In " good society " 
here, you meet with neither lawyer, nor merchant, 
nor physician, not even with the clergy, for, in 
Belgium, priests are drawn from the peasant and 
bourgeois classes, and their consecration is not 
believed to confer upon them nobility. Birth has 
hitherto been an almost indispensable passport into 
the highest circles, but money, aided by the 
stealthy progress of democratic ideas, is making 
breaches in the aristocratic entrenchments ; and 



58 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

ere many generations, " good society " in Europe 
will present something like the motley concourse 
that it does with us, where, the social arrange- 
ments having no support from the political, old 
families go down and new ones come up, and the 
power of a man on 'Change is often the measure 
of his position in fashionable drawing-rooms. This 
is but the chaos of transition : the soul will in time 
assert its transcendent privileges. 

In Europe, notwithstanding occasional intermar- 
riages, the aristocratic prestige still prevails against 
plebeian merit. In social longer than in political 
life, the nobility naturally retain a predominance, 
that is of course exercised despotically. Although, 
since the invention of printing, the expansion of 
commerce, and the rapid development of industry 
and science, knowledge and wealth, the sources 
of the highest power in communities, have been 
passing out of the hands of the privileged few, 
still, social advantages, depending upon deep-rooted 
ideas, are the last to be forfeited ; and the nobility 
throughout Europe, long after their exclusion from 
the high posts in the State, will look clown upon 
the herd of plebeian aspirants to ton just as the 
ancienne noblesse of France did upon the military 
upstarts of Napoleon, and do still upon the Court 
of Louis Philippe. And this from a real superior- 
ity of position. 

The nobility of Europe, — the early, and at 



SOCIAL RANK. 59 

first the rightful sole possessors of power as the 
originally strong men ; the acknowledged monopo- 
lists of social elevations ; the dispensers of place 
and patronage ; the recipients and in turn the 
fountains of honor ; in short, the controllers with 
kings of all high interests and lords of etiquette 
and manners, — acquired, by the cultivation of the 
stateliness growing out of courtly usages and the 
tone contracted from conscious superiority, an easy 
commanding style of bearing and intercourse, 
which was of a natural inward growth, the un- 
forced expression of their social rank and being. 
Now, as this social rank and being is no longer 
attainable by others, so neither are the modes of 
life, the style of manners, the segregation from the 
people, which were its natural products. All 
attempts, therefore, on the part of those who, 
since the breaking up of the monopolies of knowl- 
edge and wealth, are now sharing their possession 
with the old nobility, to assume too their bearing 
and style, are and must be a bare assumption, a 
hollow imitation ; and not merely as such an inev- 
itable failure, but one tainted with vulgarity, the 
essence of which is false pretension. So long as 
another standard than the feudal aristocratic is not 
set up as the measure of social position, there will 
be war between the old regime, which in its sphere 
was a genuine true thing, and the new, which 
being an apery of it, is a false thing. In the end, 



60 SCEXES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

the old, no longer upheld by law, impoverished by 
idleness and debilitated by generations of luxurious 
inactivity, will have to succumb, and become so- 
cially extinct, or absorbed into the triumphant new, 
and pedigrees will grow confused, and the imag- 
ination cease to invest birth with virtue. 

In this conflict will for a time be aggravated the 
most repulsive quality of aristocratic life. The 
feeling of superiority over one's fellows, mere 
personal pride, will be still more cherished. Their 
children are already bred up to look upon them- 
selves as better than all other children. Towards 
their fellow-men a sentiment rather of repulsion 
than sympathy is generated in the members of a 
privileged class. Instead of keeping their hearts 
open with liberal susceptibility to worth and excel- 
lence, they are ever on the alert to fend off all 
others from contact with themselves. They form 
a narrow circle, living to themselves on sympathies 
of selfishness. These feelings, latent while their 
rank was undisputed, become active against ple- 
beian encroachment ; while their plebeian rivals 
and imitators cultivate the same feeling as well 
from imitation, as to strengthen their new state 
against the aspiring multitude still below them. 
An offspring too of this conflict is Fashion, which 
is an effort to outvie exclusiveness, to be more 
tonish than haut ton itself. Fashion is a wingless 
aspiration after elegance ; a brazen usurpation ; a 



CULTURE AND REFINEMENT. 61 

baseless pretension kept alive by quick changes of 
aspect; an impertinent substitution of personality 
for principle ; an imposition of effrontery upon 
weakness ; a caricature of beauty ; a restless pro- 
saic straining for an ideal ; a mock flower, bloom- 
less, odorless, and seedless. 

Although, in the large cities, the mimicry of 
European ways evolves out of our prosaic citizens 
an unavoidable portion of vulgarity, the corrective 
of republican self-respect is ever active ; and 
amidst much false aim and shallow endeavor, there 
is perceptible a cordial appreciation of the genuine 
and true. The aspiring nouveau riche learns to 
feel that culture and taste are the essence of social 
excellence, and hastens to give his children the 
advantages himself has missed. Where there is 
natural susceptibility of polish, education and re- 
publican self-reliance tell at once upon the second 
generation ; and at times — such is the richness 
of nature — a man springs up from the workshop, 
and while by talent he attains to affluence, attains 
to grace and courteous propriety by native refine- 
ment and generosity ; and totally devoid of the 
grimaces, the sleek well-tailored outside, the money- 
jingling vulgarity of the parvenu, he takes his 
place as a gentleman without the English ordeal 
of three generations. We apply a practical test 
to know what is good blood, and soon recognize 
him for what he is. Evidence is constantly thrown 



62 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

out of a tendency towards higher things. The 
intellectual lift up the tastes, and the spiritual the 
desires, for other wants than for furniture and 
equipages. 

As inequality in mental faculties among men is 
a law of nature, the idea of a " best society " is 
real, and will go on manifesting itself more and 
more distinctly, working constantly upward through 
impure materials. The mind will by degrees 
straighten itself into better proportions. Facti- 
tious and grossly bottomed distinctions will be 
effaced. In our country we have compassed a 
vantage-ground of liberty, whence to ascend to 
higher platforms of social condition. Grossly do 
they underrate the worth of liberty, who regard 
security of person and property, equality before 
the law, freedom of speech and of printing, as its 
ripe fruit. These are but the foundation for a 
broader and more beautiful structure. Through 
them the mind will brace its wings and sharpen its 
vision for wider sweeps into the domain of the pos- 
sible, and, expanding with unrestricted intercom- 
munion, grow in brightness and beneficence. 
Proofs of this progress are discernible in the easier 
emancipation from soul-smothering customs, and in 
the longings and hopes of the freest minds. In 
this higher organization the gentleman will of course 
not be wanting ; for no well-developed society 
could be without him, in whom, as Spenser sings, — 



THE GENTLEMAN. 63 

" The gentle mind by gentle deed is known." 

Let those who regret the decay of the old-fashioned 
gentleman, because the new-fashioned one, being 
a coarse imitation of him, is, like all imitations, a 
failure, take hope, that there is one of a higher 
fashion possible and already forming, in whom 
politeness, being the offspring of love and beauty, 
shall cease borrowing of falsehood ; in whom refine- 
ment shall not be the superficial show of conven- 
tional discipline, but a spontaneous emanation from 
the purified mind ; courtesy be free from pride, 
and elevation be enjoyed by right neither of pedi- 
gree nor Plutus, but solely by natural endowment, 
be acknowledged as ungrudgingly as difference of 
stature, and sit on the possessor as unconsciously 
as flowers on their stalks, and like them dispense 
beauty around. 



VIII. 

Brussels — Prussian Frontier — The Rhine. 

A FTER spending six weeks at Antwerp, we 
■^*- turned our steps towards the Rhine, stop- 
ping but a day in Brussels, to get a glimpse 
of the pictures in the Museum, a look at the 
painted windows of the Church of St. Gudule, 
and some insight into the manufacture of Brussels 
lace. We cared not to see palaces. Yv r e had been 
paced through those of Paris and its neighborhood, 
and palaces are all alike ; on the outside, huge, 
overgrown, depopulated-looking edifices, and in the 
inside, suite upon suite of lofty rooms and halls, 
where upholstery, with its glittering gildings and 
silks, keeps repeating its short circle of adornment. 
Brussels is a cheerful, sunny city, but it is always 
associated in my mind with its little ambition of 
being a little Paris, and with its sub-population of 
questionable and vulgar English, that taint its 
atmosphere. I was told at Antwerp of an Eng- 
lishman and his family, who came there to live, 
although a dull town compared with Brussels, be- 
cause, as he said, he had a good name at home, 



PRUSSIAN FRONTIER. 65 

and he would not have it blasted by a residence at 
Brussels. 

From Brussels, steam carried us in a few hours 
through the fat, well-tilled land to Liege, the Shef- 
field of Belgium. The railroad not being finished 
beyond Liege, we there took post-horses. The 
country all about Liege lifts itself briskly up into 
hills, and the road thence to Aix-la-Chapelle offers 
lively landscapes to the traveller's eye. Before 
reaching Aix we passed the Prussian frontier. 
After fifteen years I found myself again in Ger- 
many: the strong, rich tones of the language 
came back familiarly to my ears. They came 
laden with memories of kindness, and enjoyment, 
and profit. My re entrance into Germany was one 
of the happiest hours of the journey ; nor was it 
marred by vexations at the Prussian custom-house, 
through which we were allowed to pass after a 
nominal search. It is one of the important events 
in a traveller's career, the crossing of a boundary. 
Another variety of the species Man, with new fix- 
tures and environments. Another people, another 
language, another look to the land and everything 
on it. Other sights and other sounds to the freshly 
busied senses ; and to the interior mind, — alive 
in each region with its peculiar heroes and bene- 
factors, — other inmates. History unrolls another 
leaf of her illuminated testament, and we tell over 
again another treasure she has bequeathed us. 



66 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

In Aix-la-Chapelle, the birth and burial-place 
of Charlemagne, famous since the Romans for its 
sulphur baths, we spent but a night, and continued 
our way to strike the Rhine at Cologne. Thence 
to Gottingen was, by the nearest route through 
Westphalia, hardly more than a two days' journey. 
It would have been but a melancholy pleasure to 
revisit the noble old University, now made ignoble 
by the base-mindedness of her rulers. What a 
fall, with her seven hundred students, from her 
palmy state in 1824-25, when she counted over 
fifteen hundred ; and when, drawn from all quar- 
ters of the globe by her high renown, we some- 
times assembled together under the Cathedra of a 
single Professor, listeners from North America and 
from South America, from England and from Italy, 
from France and from Sweden, from Russia and 
from Switzerland, from Poland and from every 
State in Germany. The galaxy of teachers she 
then had, the successors of others as eminent, the 
cowardly policy since pursued towards her has 
prevented from being renewed. Gottingen has 
ceased to be what Napoleon called her, " 1' Univer- 
sity de l'Europe." She has dwindled into pro- 
vincialism. — And beyond was Weimar, en wreathed 
to all cultivated imaginations with a unique glory. 
In his youth, the Grand Duke Charles Augustus 
— a natural leader among men, for fifty years the 
companion of Goethe — belted his little Capital 



GOTHIC CATHEDRALS. 67 

round with the brightest stars of German genius. 
During his long life they illuminated and refined 
his court, and were a blessing to his people ; and 
since his death, their sparkling names form a dia- 
dem round his, that outshines the crowns of 
haughty kings. At the time of my visit in 1825, 
the Grand Duke and his congenial Duchess, and 
the greatest of his poetic band, Goethe, were still 
alive ; and over the hospitalities of the Palace the 
remarkable beauty of the ladies of his court threw 
a fascination that made it like a fairy castle. — 
Still further was Dresden, with its natural charms 
and its treasures of Art. But I was not now to 
behold those well-remembered spots. Our destiny 
rules us most despotically when our will seems 
freest. 

We arrived at Cologne early enough in the 
afternoon to go out and look at the Cathedral, 
which, finished, would have been, as well from its 
size as its beauty, the foremost among Gothic 
churches. Most of the Gothic cathedrals are, 
like this, unfinished. The conceptions of their 
artists were loftier than the power or will of those 
who supplied the means for their execution. Their 
incompleteness is symbolical of the shortcomings 
of the noblest minds in their aspirations. 

Our road now lay up the Rhine, but the river 
only enjoys the embrace of its hills, and the ani- 
mating company of the old castles that crown 



68 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

them, between Bonn and Mayence. Bonn is 
twelve miles above Cologne. Here, on my way 
from Gottingen fifteen years before, coming down 
the Rhine, partly on foot, before the day of steam- 
boats in Germany, I had stopped, with an English 
fellow-traveller and student, to see Niebuhr and A. 
W. Schlegel, who were Professors in the Univer- 
sity of Bonn. Schlegel kept us waiting some time 
in a neat drawing-room, where hung a portrait of 
Madame de Stael. He then came in hurriedly, 
adjusting the tie of his cravat. He was aifable 
and lively, and in his dress, bearing, and conversa- 
tion seemed anxious to sink the Professor and ap- 
pear the man of the world. Niebuhr was out, but 
came in an hour to the Hotel to see us. He was 
a tall, striking man, and spoke English perfectly. 
The sight of an American seemed to excite his 
mind. He plied me with questions about our in- 
stitutions and customs. Doubtless his thoughts 
were often busied and puzzled with the new histor- 
ical phenomenon of the great Republic, whose huge 
bulk was heaving itself up portentously in the far 
West. But Niebuhr was not the man to seize its 
significance or embrace its grandeur. His mind 
was exegetical and critical, rather than construc- 
tive and prophetic. 

We are now in the heart of Rhenish Prussia. 
The civil government of Prussia is after the mili- 
tary model. The king is the commander-in-chief 



THE GERMANS. 69 

of the nation, and the schoolmaster is his drill- 
sergeant. The boys are taught in such a way 
that the men shall fall readily into the ranks of 
obedience. A uniform is put upon their minds, 
and, as with the rank and file of a regiment, the 
uniformity is more looked to than the fitness. The 
government does all it can to save men the pain 
of thought and choice, and if it could would do 
everything. The officers of administration having 
the intelligence and industry of the cultivated 
German mind, and there being everywhere the 
German solidity and honesty, the system bears 
some good fruit, such virtue is there in order and 
method, though only of the mechanical sort. Prus- 
sia is a well-managed estate, not a well-governed 
country ; for good government implies a recogni- 
tion of the high nature of humanity, the first want 
of which is freedom. The only basis whereon the 
moral being of man can be built up is individual 
independence. To reach that higher condition of 
freedom, where he shall be emancipated from the 
tyranny of self, of his own passions, he needs first 
of all to be free from that of his fellows. The one 
freedom is only possible through the other. 

That the Germans are a breed that can keep 
pace with the best in the development of civiliza- 
tion, they have given manifold proof in achieve- 
ments by word and deed. They are a strong- 
brained, deep-hearted race. What creative power 



70 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

have they not exhibited in letters, in science, in 
Art ! With what soul and steadfastness they 
backed their mighty Luther, in his great strife for 
mental independence ! How they rose, like a 
giant from his sleep, against French usurpation, 
and with Leipsic paid Napoleon for Jena ! The 
conditions were reversed. At Jena, Napoleon, 
though with dementing egotism he had set a crown 
upon his head, was still the leader of a freshly 
emancipated people warring against old tyrannies : 
at Leipsic he was the hardened despot, with no in- 
struments but his legions, and no props to his vul- 
gar throne but force and fear ; while the monarchs 
of Germany and Russia were upborne on the 
hearts of the liberty-seeking peoples. The scep- 
tred weaklings, whose capitals had been a prey to 
the conqueror, became suddenly strong with the 
strength of wrath-swollen multitudes. This wrath 
is ever ready to be rekindled. Its next outburst 
will not be against foreign oppressors. 

At Bonn we stopped but to change horses. Now 
it is that the Rhine discloses its treasures. Two or 
three miles above Bonn we passed under the ancient 
Castle of Godesberg ; a little further that of Ro- 
iandseck ; opposite, on the other side of the water, 
the Drachenfels gives life to the " Seven Moun- 
tains " ; and midway between them, lying softly 
in the low river, is the island with the old Convent 
of Nonnenwerth. Around are green valleys, and 



THE RHINE. 71 

plentiful fields, and grape-mantled steeps, and fre- 
quent villages and compact towns. And thus, the 
whole way from Bonn to Mayence, you drive 
through a double population. Above, the sides of 
the castle-crowned hills are alive with mailed cav- 
alcades, bugles are winding from the turrets, fair 
ladies are leaning over parapets waving their sweet 
welcomes and farewells ; while below, through the 
tranquil movements of a secure industry, the noise- 
less labors of tillage, the hum of busy towns, you 
roll smoothly forward on a macadamized road, and 
try to stir up your phlegmatic postilion to a race 
with a steamboat abreast of you on the river. To 
eyes at all open to natural beauty, this region, un- 
peopled, rude, and naked, were a feast ; but twice- 
touched as it is by the creative hand of man, the 
broken shadows of ancient strongholds checkering 
the turfed flanks of the cannon-guarded fortress ; 
the images of spires, of cottages, of wooded 
heights, of ruins, of rocky precipices, of palaces, 
all playing together in the ripple of the sinuous 
stream ; the old river, fresh and lively as in the 
days of Arminius, with its legends, its history, and 
its warm present life ; senses, thought, imagina- 
tion, all addressed at once amid scenes steeped in 
beauty ; — it is a region unmatched, and worth a 
long journey to behold. 



IX. 

The Water-Cure. 

A S we approached Coblentz, Ehrenbreitstein, the 
-^- Gibraltar of Germany, lifted high its armed 
head, frowning towards France. The next morn- 
ing we were again on the enchanted road, and in 
two hours reached Boppart. Turning up hill to 
the right, just on entering the town, we ascended 
to a large substantial old pile directly behind and 
above it. This was formerly the convent of Marien- 
berg, for noble ladies, most solidly and commo- 
diously built for a household of two hundred ; 
seated in a valley between hills, with shady walks, 
and springs, and fountains, and broad terraces, 
whence you look over the old town, founded by 
Drusus, into the river, now enlivened almost hourly 
with sociable steamboats. The convent has been 
converted into a water-cure establishment. While 
at Antwerp, several small works, the first ever pub- 
lished on the water-cure, had fallen into my hands, 
and impressed my mind at once almost to convic- 
tion with the truth of its principles. I will en- 
deavor to give a sketch of what it is and what it 



THE WATER-CURE. 73 

does. I cannot better begin than with an account 
of my own daily proceeding. 

At five in the morning I am waked up by a 
bath-attendant. Having stripped the narrow bed, 
he lays on the bare mattress a thick blanket, wherein 
he wraps me closely from neck to heels ; then an- 
other blanket, doubled, is laid on and tightly tucked 
in, and then another, and then a light feather-bed. 
This is fitly called being packed up. In about an 
hour I begin to perspire ; whereupon the window 
is opened to let in fresh air, and half a tumbler of 
cold water is administered, which draught, repeated 
every quarter of an hour, promotes perspiration. 
After perspiring for forty or fifty minutes, I am 
unpacked, get streaming out of the blankets into 
an empty bath-tub at the bedside, when "instantly 
a couple of large buckets of cold water are poured 
over my head and shoulders. For a minute or 
two my hands and the attendant's are swiftly plied 
all over the surface, as if to rub in the water. 
Then comes a thorough dry rubbing with a coarse 
linen sheet, and, after dressing quickly, a walk 
abroad for half an hour or more to support and 
hasten reaction, drinking the while from the foun- 
tain two or three glasses of water. On the break- 
fast-table are wheat and rye bread, butter, milk, 
and water, and fruit for those who choose it ; no 
tea, nor coffee, nor anything warm. Between 
eleven and twelve I take a sitting-bath of from 



74 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

fifteen to twenty minutes' duration, on coming out 
of which I go up to the top of the hills as if the 
muscles that had been immersed were turned into 
wings. Two or three more tumblers of water are 
drunk during the exercise. Dinner, at one, is 
never smoking hot, and consists for the most part 
of beef, mutton, and fowls roasted or boiled, with 
vegetables, followed by a simple dessert. No 
spices are used in cooking, and water is the only 
beverage. Bathing recommences about four, a 
long interval being prescribed after each meal. 
My afternoon bath is generally what is called a 
staub-bad, literally, a dust-bath, which is in fact a 
shower-bath, except that the shower, instead of 
falling from above, comes laterally from circular 
tubes in the midst of which you stand, and which, 
the moment the water is let on, pour upon you a 
thousand fine streams. Resolution must be well 
seconded by quick friction with the hands, to keep 
you within this refrigerating circle two or three 
minutes. After this is the best time for a long 
stroll over the hills or along the shores of the 
Rhine. Supper, between six and seven, is much 
the same as breakfast ; nothing hot, nothing stim- 
ulating. All meals are alike in the voracity of 
appetite with which they are eaten. I wear all 
day over the stomach a water-band or compress, — 
a double fold of coarse linen, six or seven inches 
wide and about twenty long, half wrung out in 



THE WATER-CURE. 75 

cold water, over which is tied a dry one of the 
same material and thickness, a little broader and 
meeting round the body. This, excluding the air, 
prevents evaporation from the wet bandage, and 
keeps it always warm. The compress is re-wet 
every two or three hours. Its effect is, to draw 
more life into the weakened stomach. 

A similar course is daily followed by the rest of 
the inmates. Instead of the affusion from buckets, 
most plunge directly into the full-bath after the 
sweating in the morning. Some are wrapt in a 
wet sheet, within the blankets, in which they lie 
about an hour. Then there is the potent douche, 
a stream of two to four inches diameter, falling 
from ten to twenty feet perpendicularly, which is 
taken when the body has become invigorated and 
the skin opened by the other applications. There 
are, moreover, local baths : foot-baths, head-baths, 
eye-baths. 

The number of patients in this establishment at 
present is about eighty, with all kinds of chronic 
maladies, — gout, rheumatism, neuralgia, dys- 
pepsia, deafness, lameness, paralysis, &c. Fill up 
the &c. with every name that has been coined to 
express the bodily afflictions of man, and not one 
that is curable, but can be cured by means of 
water. By means of water, note that ; for water 
can cure no disease ; it can but help or force the 
body itself to cure it. What more does medical 



76 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Art profess to do ? No intelligent physician aims 
at aught but so to rouse or direct the vis medica- 
trix naturce, the curative force of nature, that it 
may throw off disease. To his lancet, his purga- 
tives, his emetics, his narcotics, his stimulants, he 
ascribes a purely secondary agency, that of touch- 
ing the spring of life in a way that it shall rebound 
against the evil that presses it. All his appliances 
and efforts and doses have but one single aim, 
namely, to act on the vital force. In awakening, 
seconding, guiding this, consists his whole skill. 
Herein, then, the water and drug systems are 
alike. Most unlike are they in the innocence and 
efficacy of their means, and in the success of their 
endeavors. 

Patients are here, as at mineral watering-places, 
on account of chronic diseases, that is, diseases 
that have taken up their abode in the body, be- 
cause the body has not vigor left to eject them. 
These complaints the Faculty hardly ever profess 
to eradicate. In most patients so afflicted, disease 
and the doctor have a joint life-estate. Change 
of air, temperance, quiet, diet, are the alleviating 
prescriptions to some. Permanent restoration is 
seldoui promised by the upright physician. Priess- 
nitz and his disciples undertake to cure, and do 
cure, many such ; and by means of water nearly 
all are curable, where there is constitutional vital- 
ity enough for reaction, and no organic lesion. 



THE WATER-CURE. 77 

The process is as simple as nature's laws. The 
world will soon wonder, as it has clone at other 
revelations of genius, why it was so long undis- 
covered. Priessnitz has revealed the power there 
is in water. With this one agent he can cowork 
with all the processes and movements of nature in 
the human organism. He can draw the vital 
stream from one part to another ; he can unload 
the congested bloodvessels ; he can quicken or 
slacken the action of the heart ; he can elevate or 
depress the nervous energy. And his agent, in 
this at once subtle and powerful cooperation, is not 
a poison, as is almost every drug, — never weakens, 
as does every bleeding, — but is a pure nourishing 
element, as precious to the body as the vital air 
itself, and having with its every texture such sym- 
pathy, that four parts out of five of the constit- 
uents of the blood are water. In this consists 
much of its virtue as a curative means. It is not 
enough that it be cold : Priessnitz rejects all min- 
eral waters, and even salt sea-water. 

The first step towards a restoration of health is 
a resubjection of the body to natural laws as re- 
gards food, drink, air, and exercise. Further : as 
the vital energy is the final source of restoration, 
it is necessary, when disease has become fixed in 
the body, that this energy be directed against it 
with undivided aim. Hence, there must be with- 
drawal from business and care and serious mental 



78 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

occupation ; and therefore it is that the cure of 
chronic complaints can, in most cases, only be un- 
dertaken with hope of success at a water-cure 
establishment. These first conditions being satis- 
fied, under which the body begins at once to feel 
fresh vigor, the next step is, to accelerate this in- 
vigoration. The fortifying effects of cold bathing 
are universally known. Without considering now 
the various forms of its application, devised by the 
sagacity of Priessnitz, the mere loss of caloric in 
a cold bath necessarily stimulates the appetite. 
More food is called for to supply the lost heat. 
The quickened respiration in the bath and during 
the rapid exercise it provokes, supply a corre- 
spondent increase of oxygen. As Liebig simply 
and beautifully explains, animal heat is the result 
of the combination within the body between the 
oxygen brought in through the lungs and the car- 
bon and hydrogen in the food. The oxygen con- 
sumes, literally burns up, the waste of the body, 
the dead particles that have served their purpose 
of nourishing the vital activity. The fire burns 
more briskly. By the increase of food, fresh ma- 
terial is furnished more rapidly ; the burning of 
the old keeps pace through the increased influx of 
oxygen ; and thus the transformations in the body, 
the source and index of health, go on with increased 
quickness, and the strength grows in proportion. 
A man with a good fund of vitality left, who takes 



THE WATER-CURE. 79 

three or four cold baths and drinks a dozen glasses 
of cold water daily, will eat just double his usual 
quantity, and that of the plainest fere, and with a 
relish that he never felt at the costliest banquet, 
and a sweetness and fulness of flavor that recall 
the time of his fast-growing boyhood. 

It is a familiar fact, that, if a fragment of bone, 
for instance, in case of fracture, be left loose and 
unknit up when the fracture heals, it will be thrown 
out to the surface by the vital force. Where there 
is life enough, the same self-purifying, self-protect- 
ing effort will be made against whatever arrests or 
disturbs the vital process, against every form of 
disease therefore. The third step in the proceed- 
ing of Priessnitz is, to encourage and assist this 
tendency by more specific means than the mere 
addition of strength by cold bathing. 

How is the determination from the centre to the 
surface to be promoted ? 

By action on the skin through the sweating in 
blankets, and the soaking in the wet sheet inclosed 
by blankets. The power of these applications 
cannot be conceived but by one who has seen them, 
— I may add, felt them. An activity is awakened 
in the skin unknown to it before, and this without 
any foreign or hostile appliances. Under the air- 
tight blankets softly oozes out the perspiration ; the 
wet sheet sucks at the whole surface, like a gentle 
all-embracing poultice. The skin is in a glow — a 



80 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

glow which it owes to no heat but that beneath it. 
The life of the whole body is drawn to and towards 
it. In this state of heightened animation it reacts 
against the cold bath with alacrity. One or other 
of these processes, — according to the disease, con- 
dition, or temperament of the patient, — repeated 
daily, keeps the currents, so to speak, always set- 
ting outwardly. The skin, that great auxiliary of 
the lungs, grows elastic, regains its functions that 
had become lamed by the destructive practice of 
swathing in flannel and the neglect of cold ablu- 
tions needed daily for the whole surface as much 
as for the face. Chronic congestions and inflam- 
mations are thus gradually relieved ; the system 
feels lightened. Morbific matter is expelled. 
That it is morbific, is often known by its odor and 
color. Frequently, too, what medicines have been 
taken, sometimes years before, is discovered by the 
odor of the perspiration ; as valerian, iodine, assa- 
foetida, sulphur, mercury. 

The sitting-bath performs the important part of 
drawing the blood from the brain, and of invigo- 
rating the great nerves of the stomach and bowels, 
which in nearly all chronic complaints have become 
weakened by drugs, heating food and drinks, and 
sedentary habits. When, by the sweating or the 
wet sheet, the sitting-bath, and copious daily 
draughts of cold water, the skin has been opened 
and animated, the internal skin — the lining mem- 



THE WATER-CURE. 81 

brane of the lungs and digestive organs — stimu- 
lated, and all the functions invigorated, so that the 
system is restored in a degree to its pristine power 
of resistance, then is applied the most vigorous of 
all the water-agents, the douche, which rouses to 
the utmost the nervous energy, and thus contrib- 
utes much towards putting the body in a state to 
cope with its foe. 

Now, the aim of all these purifying energizing 
processes is, to bring on a crisis, that is, an effort 
of the system to rid itself of the disease which 
obstructs and oppresses it. The crisis is, in fact, 
in strong cases, an acute attack, taking the form 
of diarrhoea, more or less active or prolonged, or 
of vomiting, or cutaneous eruption, or fever. 
Sometimes these symptoms come one after the 
other, or even several at once. With knowledge 
and judgment, the crisis is guided surely to a cure. 
When the disease is not of long standing, the func- 
tional derangement not being firmly established, 
the cure is effected of course much more quickly 
and often without apparent crisis. On the other 
hand, in aggravated cases, when the body, in the 
phrase of Priessnitz, is very full of bad stuff, the 
patient may have to go through two or three crises 
before his system is perfectly purged of disease. 
Once through the crisis, the patient is cured, cured 
effectually, radically, not apparently and tempora- 
rily, but permanently and absolutely. The ner- 



82 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

vous energy is renovated, the skin is restored to 
the full performance of its important functions, the 
digestive apparatus works perfectly, the blood flows 
actively and impartially, no morbid condition lurks 
in any of the tissues, the transformations go on 
briskly and smoothly, life plays lightly and evenly 
through the whole organism : the man is well. 
With healthy habits he can keep so all his days, 
and end them with an easy natural death, not the 
hard unnatural one that most are doomed to, dying 
of disease and the doctor. 

Visitors are astonished at the cheerfulness of the 
inmates. A merrier company is not to be found 
on the joyous Rhine. Such a happy hospital is a 
phenomenon. No brilliant balls, nor luxurious 
lounges, nor dainty viands, nor fragrant wines, nor 
gambling-saloons, are needed here as at the neigh- 
boring Ems and Wiesbaden, to charm away ennui 
and make the day endurable. Noon drives away 
morning, and evening noon, ere we have done with 
them ; and when we lay our heads down at night, 
so quick and dream-tight is sleep, that morning is 
upon us again as if he had but waited for the clos- 
ing of our lids, and nature had compressed hours 
into moments that they might lie weightless on our 
brains. Such is the virtue of water, which at 
once soothes and exhilarates. It must be remem- 
bered, too, that the invalids here are all outcasts, 
unfortunates sentenced by doctors' edicts to per- 



THE WATER-CURE. 83 

petiml banishment from the realm of health. 
Hence the slowness of the cure, which few w T ho 
have the time have the perseverance to complete. 
Most of us are impatient if complaints of years' 
standing are not washed out in a few weeks. Thus, 
but a small number earn the full benefit of a rad- 
ical cure ; more are partially relieved of their 
pains ; the rest, and largest proportion, only get 
strength and habits wherewith the better to bear 
them. 

But it is in acute diseases that the triumphs of 
the water-cure are most signal and astounding. 
Here its results look like miracles, so rapid are 
they, so regenerative, so complete. 

I have said that the crisis is an acute attack. 
On the other hand, an acute disease is but a crisis 
brought about by the vital force of nature, unex- 
alted by the water-processes. Priessnitz cures all 
such, rapidly, with ease, with certainty. What he 
is always striving to produce, is here brought to 
his hand. An acute disease being a strenuous 
effort that the organism makes to throw out the 
enemy, Priessnitz comes in helpfully, by cooling 
the skin and opening its pores. This sounds very 
simple and easy. Is there in Christendom a phy- 
sician who can cool the skin and open the pores at 
will in a burning fever ? Not all the schools and 
systems of all countries through long ages of ex- 
periment and woe have discovered the nature of 



84 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

fevers and the art of treating them. In spite of 
his tonics, his diaphoretics, his antiphlogistics, his 
lancet, Death strides past the doctor and seizes 
upon the young and the robust as boldly and 
surely now as a thousand years ago. Let the 
world, then, rejoice. Glad tidings have come 
from Graeffenberg. Some of the scourges of 
mankind are stayed. The cholera, the scarlet- 
fever, the smallpox, are shorn of their terrors. 
At this proclamation some will smile, some will 
chide, the most will ejaculate incredulous. Facts 
upon facts are there ; and thousands have witnessed 
them and spread afar the news of the blessing ; 
and those who have looked at them studiously, 
know why they are and that they must be. In- 
flammations and fevers are perfectly manageable 
by Priessnitz and his pupils. What is the glory 
of Harvey and Jenner to that of the German 
peasant ? 

From the times of Hippocrates and Galen, down 
to those of Currie and Hoffmann, many are the 
doctors, as set forth in the books brought out by 
Priessnitz's doings, who have cured diseases with 
water. But the shrewdest of them had only 
glimpses of its power. Nature, as is her way, 
has constantly thrown out hints to them, and temp- 
tations with facts ; but not in one of them, before 
Priessnitz, did the facts imbreed thoughts, that, 
wrought upon by the awakened spirit of research, 



THE WATER-CURE. 85 

led it on to the detection of the laws whereby this 
one element becomes a curative means of an effi- 
cacy beyond the liveliest hopes of medical enthu- 
siasts. Still, "the Faculty" say, forsooth, there 
is nothing new in Priessnitz's pretended discov- 
eries. Is there nothing new in putting a patient 
daily for months through four or five cold baths, 
one or two of them while his skin is dripping with 
perspiration produced by his own warmth, and 
thereby curing him radically of the gout ? Is it 
not new to thrust a man, delirious, into a cold shal- 
low bath, and there keep him for nine hours, with 
constant friction on his legs and pouring of cold 
water on his head, and thus to restore him in 
twenty-four hours ? Who ever before put a child 
with a brain-fever through forty wet sheets in as 
many successive half hours, and by so doing com- 
pletely subdued in three days a disease whose 
cure would have been doubtful with drugs in three 
weeks ? This magical wet-sheet itself, what a dis- 
covery ! Is it not a stupendous novelty to regard 
fevers as, in all cases, but the manifestation of the 
struggle going on within between the vital prin- 
ciple and a disease which threatens it ? And is 
it not a new feeling, in the summoned healer, to 
approach the fever-heated patient with clearest 
confidence, looking on the fever as a sign of vital 
activity, which with a single agent he can uphold 
and helpfully direct to a rapid and safe issue ? 



86 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

instead of going to work against the vital principle 
with his drugs, — which draw it off from its strug- 
gle with the disease to fight themselves, — and 
with his life-tapping lancet, inwardly trembling, — 
if he be clear-headed and conscientious, — for the 
slow result, doubting of his whole procedure, com- 
ing back daily for weeks with the trepidation of 
one who is tussling in the dark with Death for a 
human being, and often overwhelmed at the sudden 
victory of his foe by the conviction that himself 
has opened to him the path. I refer now to the 
best of the medical guild, the few men of thought, 
feeling, and integrity. Such will feel how sadly 
true is the self-reproach of Faust, who, on bein'g 
hailed with honor and thanks by the peasants for 
having, a young assistant to his medical father, 
saved so many of them from the plague, exclaims 
that their praise sounds like scorn, and relates to 
his companion the blind, desperate nature of their 
concluding as follows : — 

And thus, with most infernal pills, 
Among these valleys and these hills, 

Far worse than did the pest we blazed. 
Thousands did I the poison give; 
They withered off, and I must live 

To hear th' audacious murderers praised.* 

* So haben wir mit hollischen Latwergen 
In diesen Thalern, diesen Bergen, 
Weit schlimmer als die Pest getobt. 
Ich habe selbst das Gift an Tausende gegeben; 
Sie welkten hin: ich muss erleben, 
Dass man die frechen Murder lobt. 



THE WATER-CURE. 87 

The common crowd of legalized botchers walk 
through their daily mischievous routine, partly in 
ignorant thoughtlessness, partly in insensibility. 

" The whole baseless calamitous system of drug- 
poisoning," says a German expounder of Priess- 
nitz's practice, " which has already snatched away 
many millions, had its origin in the misconception 
of primary or acute diseases. Because people did 
not perceive that these abnormal feverish condi- 
tions are only efforts at healing which the organism 
makes, they mistook these fever-symptoms for the 
disease itself; and finding that they could be al- 
layed by bloodletting and drugging, they prized 
this fatal discovery. Then sprang up from this 
poisonous seeding a whole host of terrible deadly 
maladies. But because the afflictions did not show 
themselves immediately, within a few weeks after 
the medicinal suppression of the acute disease, no 
one had a thought that the drugs and bleeding 
were the cause of them." The same author thus 
writes of inflammation in case of wounds : " In 
order to heal a wound, the organism must form on 
the part where the wound is new flesh, new ves- 
sels for the new capillaries, &c. To be able to 
form this flesh, it is necessary that the material 
for it — the forming sap, which is the blood — be 
led to the part in abnormal quantity. Thus, too, 
plants heal an injury by sending to the injured 
spot sap in unusual abundance. Through this 



88 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

abnormal blood-life, increased warmth is produced 
in the part to be healed, which warmth, however, 
only then gets to real inflammation when the in- 
stinct of the wounded person for cold water 
inwardly and outwardly is not satisfied. Allo- 
pathy, in its stolidity, looks upon this streaming 
of the blood to the wounded part, and the exalta- 
tion of life therein to the point of heat, as disease, 
as some thins; which must be removed, and lets 

CD ' 

blood. Hereupon, notwithstanding, the organism 
continues to send blood to the injured part, where 
it is needed, and the doctor continues to let blood, 
sometimes until the extremities become bloodless 
and cold, and the patient often dies of weakness, 
— as is also the case with internal, so called, in- 
flammations." 

These views of fever and inflammation have 
been deduced from the facts observed and brought 
to light by Priessnitz. If any like them were ever 
before entertained, it was but in a partial, feeble 
way. They have never formed part of the medi- 
cal creed ; they have not been made the foun- 
dation of a school. As great as between the 
momentary illumination of lightning and the light 
of the day-long sun is the difference between hav- 
ing a thought pass through the mind and having 
it planted there till it grow to a fruitful conviction. 
Hereby is the Healing Art become, for the first 
time, what all Art ought to be, the handmaid of 



THE WATER-CURE. 89 

Nature, and thus, at last, what it never before 
was, a genuine healing art, and a blessing to hu- 
manity. 

This broad, absolute condemnation of the drug 
and lancet practice is at any rate not new. Hear 
some of the most famous physicians speak of their 
Art. 

Van Helmont says : "A murder-loving devil 
has taken possession of the medical chairs ; for 
none but a devil could recommend to physicians 
bloodletting as a necessary means." 

Boerhave : " When one compares the good per- 
formed on the earth by half a dozen true sons of 
iEsculapius since the rise of the Art, with the evil 
done among men by the countless number of doc- 
tors of this trade, one will doubtless think that it 
were much better if there never had been a phy- 
sician in the world." 

Reil : " It is perfectly clear that we do not 
know the nature of fever, and that the treatment 
thereof is nothing more than naked empiricism. 
The variety of opinions is a proof that the nature 
of the subject is not yet clear ; for when the truth 
is once found, certainty takes the place of hypoth- 
esis in every sound mind." 

Hush : " We have not only multiplied diseases, 
but have made them more fatal." 

Majmdie : " In the actual condition of medical 
science, the physician mostly plays but the part 



90 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

of simple spectator of the sad episodes which his 
profession furnishes him." 

Billing : " I visited the different schools, and 
the students of each hinted, if they did not assert, 
that the other sects killed their patients." 

Water, too, can kill, or it could not cure. Yet 
may it fearlessly be affirmed, that, where one will 
be hurt or killed by the water-treatment, one hun- 
dred will be by drugs. Relatively, the water- 
cure is without danger ; nay, it is so absolutely. 
Knowledge is needed to do anything, even to grow 
cabbages. An idiot may break his neck falling 
down steps safely used by thousands daily. But 
conceive knowledge with poisons for its instrument, 
and the same knowledge with one pure agent, and 
able with that one to bring out any and all the 
effects aimed at by the lancet and whole pharma- 
copoeia ! In the skilfullest hands, arsenic, prussic 
acid, copperas, oil of vitriol, mercury, iodine, strych- 
nine, all medical poisons in constant use, suddenly 
cause death at times, to the confounding of the 
practitioner. Their remote effects in shortening 
and embittering life are incalculable, unimagin- 
able. In short, the water-cure, at once simple and 
philosophical, is dangerous only where there is 
clumsiness, rashness, or stupidity : drugs, virulent 
and treacherous, are full of immediate danger in 
the most prudent and sagacious hands, and are 
besides charged with evils distant and insidious. 



THE WATER-CURE. 91 

By means of water, then, whose energizing and 
healing power has been to the full revealed by 
Priessnitz, chronic diseases, till now deemed hope- 
less, are eradicable, and acute ones cease to be 
alarming. By the thorough euro of acute attacks, 
chronic complaints — mostly the consequence of 
suppressed or half-cured acute ones — will be 
much fewer. Through the same influence, acute 
will become less frequent. Were this discovery to 
cause no other change of habits, the substitution 
of cold for warm baths and the general practice 
of cold bathing will alone produce such bodily for- 
tification as to ward off an immense amount of 
disease. But the change cannot stop there. 
Wedded as men are to routine, hugging custom 
as if life itself were intertwined with its plaits, 
still they do by degrees let in the light of new 
truths. When one of her great laws is discov- 
ered, Nature smiles joyfully and benignantly, as a 
mother on the unfolding of her infant's mind, and 
in man's heart is reflected the smile, the harbinger 
of new blessings. This discovery is already hailed 
by tens of thousands as pregnant with immeas- 
urable good. It is so simple, so intelligible, so 
accessible, that it must spread its blessings, in 
spite of prejudice, interest, and ignorance. 

Health is nearly banished from Christendom. 
Even among those who lead an outdoor life of 
healthful labor, there is the debilitating counter- 



92 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

action of stimulants, in drink, in food, in tobacco. 
The wealthier classes are more the victims of 
drugs, the poor of alcohol. These two curses, 
poisoning the sources of life, have diminished the 
stature and strength of the race far more even 
than vice and poverty, of which, too, alcohol is a 
prolific parent. That there is this diminution is 
proved, among other evidence, by the falling off in 
the standard of stature for soldiers in the principal 
countries of Europe, in England, in France, in 
Germany. Through these poisons, the natural 
instincts of appetite have been depraved. There 
is a general vitiation of the palate through the per- 
verted nerves, brought about by the universal use 
of all kinds of foreign stimulants, medicinal, spir- 
ituous, and spicy. Water is deemed good to mix 
with spirits and wine, and milk with tea and coffee. 
Pure, they are insipid ; and so deep has reached 
the corruption, that it is quite a common belief 
that water is unwholesome ! There is a general 
craving for stimulants. They are esteemed tem- 
perate who use them only at meals ! Their hurt- 
ful effects upon the health, temper, strength, and 
morals, cannot be estimated. Against all this, 
Nature protests by the sighs of weakness, the 
groans of disease, the pangs of conscience, and 
the agonies of premature death. Priessnitz would 
seem to be commissioned to reutter the commands 
of Nature, to rouse mankind to a sense of its 



THE WATER-CURE. 93 

growing physical degeneracy, and to open the path 
towards health, refreshed life, and enjoyment. 
Priessnitz has demonstrated, that for the preserva- 
tion of health and restoration from disease there 
is an efficacy, a virtue in Water, hitherto un- 
dreamt of; that all kinds of stimulants, under all 
circumstances whether in disease or in health, are 
always falsehoods, disguised like worse moral lies 
under cajoling flatteries ; and this he enforces with 
the eloquence of cheerfullest, sweetest sensations, 
renovating, I might almost say re-creating, the 
nervous system, and thus putting literally new life 
into the body. 



X. 



Frankfort — Goethe — Heidelberg — Baden-Baden — 

STRASBURG — SCHAFFHAUSEN — SWITZERLAND — THE RlGHI 

— Lucerne — Berne — Geneva. 

rpHE last of July, 1811, after a six weeks' ex- 
■*- perittient of the water-cure, we left Boppart. 
These few weeks have made, I may say, an epoch 
in my life. It is not the bodily strength I gained, 
— and the time was much too short for a full res- 
toration to health, — but the gain of new truths 
and convictions, which give me in a degree com- 
mand over my bodily condition ; the gain of 
insight and knowledge, whereby I can ward off 
attacks against which I, like others, before felt 
myself powerless. I have learnt to know the 
effects of stimulants, and am emancipated from 
their tyranny. As on the morning of our depart- 
ure from Marienberg, we drove along the beautiful 
shores of the Rhine, I felt that new and beneficent 
laws had been divulged to me, and that I was 
closer under the protection of Nature. 

At Bingen, after exploring the Niederwald on 
donkeys, and visiting the Rheinstein, — a turreted 
old castle perched among rocks and woods high 



THOUGHT AND EMOTION. 95 

above the river, fitted up and inhabited by a prince 
of Prussia, — we quitted the Rhine to take the 
road to Wiesbaden, where, as at other fashionable 
watering-places, Idleness holds an annual festival ; 
for the proportion is small of those who are here 
solely for the business of cure. Thence a short 
railroad carried us to Frankfort, famous for its 
biennial fairs, where merchants thickly congregate ; 
for the election and coronation in past centuries of 
the emperors of Germany ; and most famous of 
all as the birthplace of Goethe, who, as boy, 
among the other sights and sounds that were teach- 
ing his young mind its powers, witnessed with 
greedy delight one of the imperial coronations, 
himself already appointed to a throne and a sway 
firmer and wider than that of emperors. Here 
were laid the foundations of a nature, the richest 
the earth has borne since Shakspeare. 

Sir Egerton Brydges, that genial old man, says : 
"A large part of the existence of a human being 
consists in thought and sentiment." Like air 
through the lungs, thought and emotion are curl- 
ing unceasingly round the brain ; they are the 
atmosphere of the soul, as impalpable, yet as real 
and vital, as that we breathe. Without this lively 
presence of feeling and thought, we cannot be, as 
soul-endowed beings ; it is the state of mental 
life. Our friends, our neighbors, our children, are 
far off from us, in comparison with this sleepless 



96 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

inward offspring of the mind. It is well-limbed, 
healthy, clean ; we live the erect, loving, steadfast 
life of a genuine man ; is it deformed, crabbed ; 
our life is narrow, suspicious, timid. What a task, 
then, how high, how deep, to feed, to purify, to 
enlarge, to enrich this spring of every human 
movement, endeavor, purpose, deed. Such is the 
poet's function, the noblest, the most useful. 
Through his sensibility to the beautiful, he sees 
farthest into the nature of things, goes down to 
the root of the matter, discerns in each class of 
being the original type, wherein Beauty has its 
perfect dwelling. Embodying the visions thus had 
in moulds which each creates for itself, he brings 
before his fellow-men mirrors wherein they behold 
themselves, their thoughts and feelings, subtilized, 
exalted, — magic mirrors, whose images, glowing 
with almost supernatural effulgence, are yet felt to 
be true. For poetry is a distillation of Beauty 
out of the feelings and doings of daily life ; and a 
poem is but the finest, maturest fruit of impulses, 
which exist in, and openly or secretly control, the 
most prosaic worker in a trading community. 
Who so base or dull, but has had moments of spir- 
itual abstraction, when his whole being was pene- 
trated with unearthly light, whereby all things, as 
it were transfigured, looked calm and joyful ? 
Breathes there a man, not blasted with idiocy, in 
whom at times a gorgeous sunset would not awaken 



GOETHE. 97 

emotion, whose heart would not open to the mystic 
beauty of the midnight sky, who has not felt, 
though but for an instant, a quickening impulse 
towards perfection ? Such moods the poet fosters, 
awakens, confirms. He teaches the mind to use 
its wings : he peoples it with richer possibilities. 
The poet is the highest of educators. With the 
gushings of the young untainted heart mingle his 
warm expansive thoughts, and, as years ripen, 
we embrace more closely the truths he has melo- 
diously unfolded, unconscious often whence they 
have come. 

The fortune of worldly position and of length 
of years favored the preeminent genius of Goethe 
in performing the great task of the poet in a way 
unparalleled in these latter times. No man of the 
age has so widened the intellectual horizon of his 
country, so deepened and freshened the common 
sea of thought, so enriched the minds of his con- 
temporaries with images of beauty and power. 
Among the heartless, senseless complaints against 
Goethe, — as such will be made against the great- 
est, — that of his want of patriotism is the most 
vapid. Let the man be pointed to who has done 
so much to enlighten, to elevate Germany. He 
has thus contributed more towards the liberty of 
his country than any score of " Liberals," even 
though they be genuine ones. There is a fitness 
in his being born at Frankfort, at once the capital 



98 SCENES AXD THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

of Germany and a free town. Saving Luther, 
there is none other who better deserves the title 
of Father of his country. 

His fellow-citizens are about to raise to him a 
colossal statue in Frankfort. In the neighboring 
town of Mayence, a noble one, designed by Thor- 
waldsen, has been lately erected to Guttenberg. 
Goethe and Guttenberg will be side by side. They 
belong together : the one the German who invented 
types, the other the German who has made the 
best use of them. 

A day sufficed for Frankfort. The most beau- 
tiful thing they have to show, is Dannecker's statue 
of Ariadne. For our route towards Switzerland 
we chose what is called the mountain road, which 
traverses one of the most fertile plains of Europe, 
bounded on the east by a range of hills, sloping 
up into soft valleys and wooded heights, with here 
and there a ruined castle to connect the fresh- 
looking landscape with the olden time. Our first 
night was at Weinheim, an ancient town begirt 
with towers, and snugly seated, amidst orchards 
and vineyards, at the foot of the hills. Early 
before breakfast, I walked up to the old castle of 
Windeck. I met people going out to work ; they 
looked mostly hunger-pinched and toil-bent. To 
how many is the earth a cold prison, instead of the 
fair warm garden Nature offers it. To none, even 
the most favored, is life what it might be. When 



BADEN-BADEN. 99 

will men's aims be truer, and their means juster, 
and existence cease to be a harrying scramble ? 
The earth is yet shadowed by the scowl of man 
upon his fellow. Nature is most rich and boun- 
tiful, would we but live after her law. The re- 
sources are within and about us ; and a Chris- 
tian must believe that they will be awakened 
and improved, till man at last smiles upon 
man. 

A night-rain had sweetened the air and land for 
our morning-drive to Heidelberg, which was the 
next stage. We spent an hour among the broad 
ruins of the famed castle, saw the streets lively with 
students, — joyous, intelligent-looking youths, — 
sought out two or three young Americans at their 
lodgings, and then went again rolling smoothly on 
our journey, to end the day at Carlsruhe (Charles' 
rest), the capital of the Grand Duchy of Baden. 
The next day we dined at Baden-Baden, the cele- 
brated watering-place, lying beautifully in a stream- 
enlivened valley, between gentle hills, overrun for 
miles with shady walks and drives. 

The Cursaal, containing the spacious public 
saloons and ball-rooms, and furnished like a palace, 
is the general resort in the evening. Here are 
the gambling-tables, three or four of them, all 
plying at the same time their silent ' gloomy trade. 
Round each large oval table, with its wheel of des- 
tiny in the centre, and its fine green cloth covered 



100 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

with figures and mystic divisions, was a crowd of 
spectators and players, standing or seated. To 
partake of the scene actively and from its core, 
I joined one of them, throwing down occasionally 
among the twinkling gold pieces and fat piastres a 
pale florin, the lowest stake allowed. The players 
were of various conditions and ages and aspects ; 
a few of them mere players to whom it was an 
arithmetical trial, a sportful excitement, like one 
young Englishman who gayly scattered a handful 
of Napoleons at a throw, choosing, as though he 
could choose, the numbers to stake on, dallying 
carelessly with Fortune. But out of the fixed 
serious countenances of most stared the Demon 
of gain. He must have laughed one of his bitter- 
est laughs at his dupes. The scene would have 
adorned Spenser's cave of Mammon. In the 
glare of a large overhanging light, a circle of 
human beings intent upon gold, and all the feat- 
ures of Avarice concentrated in haggard unity on 
one little spot. A circle, but without bond of 
union ; each pursuing his end in selfish isolation, 
unmindful of his neighbor, except when Envy 
stirred at his good fortune ; absorbed, possessed 
by the one feeling ; his whole nature quenched 
under its cold tyranny ; his visage half petrified 
by the banishment of all other thought. It had, 
too, its poetic side ; the hope ever renewed ; the 
mysterious source of the decree, coming out of 



CATHEDRAL AT STRASBURG. 101 

unfathomable depths ; its absoluteness, represent- 
ing perfectly the inexorableness of Fate. 

Before entering on our route through the Black 
Forest to Schaffhausen in Switzerland, we made a 
circuit of half a day by Strasburg, to see the 
Cathedral, one of the most beautiful of Gothic 
churches, the pinnacle of whose spire is the high- 
est point ever reached in an edifice of human 
hands, being twenty-four feet higher than the great 
Pyramid of Egypt. These airy Gothic structures, 
rising lightly from the earth, as if they were a 
growth out of it, look, amidst the common houses 
about them, like products of another race. They 
have an air of inspiration. Their moulds were 
thoughts made musical by deep feeling. They are 
the poems of an age when Religion yearned for 
glorious embodiment. They declare the beauty 
and grandeur of the human mind, that it could 
conceive and give birth to a thing so majestic. 
Those high-springing vaults ; those far-stretching 
aisles, solemnized by hues from deeply colored 
windows ; those magnificent vistas, under roof; 
those outward walls, so gigantic, and yet so light 
with flying buttresses and the relief of delicate 
tracery ; that feathery spire, which carries the 
eyes far away from the earth ; to think, that the 
whole wondrous fabric, so huge and graceful, so 
solid and airy, so complex and harmonious, as it 
stands there before you, stood first, in its large 



102 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

beautiful completeness, in the brain of its architect, 
Erwin von Steinbach. Those great builders of 
the middle ages have not been duly known ; their 
names are not familiar, as they should be, like 
those of the great painters. 

Strasburg, and Alsace, of which it was formerly 
the capital, though long in the possession of France, 
are German still in language and customs. The 
original character of a people clings to it through 
all kinds of outward vicissitudes. This is strongly 
exemplified in the French themselves. The exact 
similarity between certain prominent features in 
the ancient Gauls and the modern French, shows 
with what fidelity mental qualities are transmitted 
through advancing stages of civilization, and what 
permanent effects, soil, atmosphere, and climate 
probably exert upon the character of a people. 
The Gauls were as noted for the fury of their first 
onset in their battles with Caesar as the French 
w r ere at Agincourt and in the Spanish Peninsula, 
and seem to have been discomfited by the stead- 
fastness of the Romans precisely in the way their 
descendants were by the cooler courage of the 
British. Winckelmann, endeavoring to show the 
effects of air and nourishment on national char- 
acter, states, that, according to the Emperor Julian, 
there were in his day more dancers in Paris than 
citizens, and I have somewhere seen this quotation 
from Cato : Baas res Gens Galllca industriosis- 



SWITZERLAND. 103 

sime persequitur, rem militarem et argute loqui : 
— Two things the Gallic people cultivate most dil- 
igently, military affairs and glibness of speech. 

In a day and a half we reached Schaffhausen 
by Homberg and Donaueschingen. At Schaff- 
hausen we had to resign the comfort of post-horses. 
The innkeepers of Switzerland, — a numerous and 
wealthy class, — have influence enough, it is said, 
to prevent the introduction of the posting-system, 
it being of course their interest to have travellers 
move slowly. On the way to Zurich, we stopped 
an hour a few miles below Schaffhausen, to see the 
Falls of the Rhine, the finest in Europe, and well 
deserving their fame. In the afternoon we had 
the first view of the snow-capt mountains. Far 
before us, fifty or sixty miles off, they lay along 
the horizon like a bank of silver. We approached 
Zurich, descending among gardens, and vineyards, 
and villas, with the lake and town in view. The 
evening hour of arrival is always a cheerful one to 
the traveller, and it is trebly so when the smiling 
welcome of " mine host " is preceded by such a 
greeting as this from Nature. We had time before 
dark to enjoy the wide prospect from the top of 
the hotel. The sublimities of Switzerland were 
still remote, but we were already encompassed by 
its beauties. 

The next morning we started early, intending to 
sleep that night on the top of the Righi. Crossing 



104 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

before breakfast Mount Alois, from whose southern 
side the mountains about the Lake of the four 
Cantons came grandly into view, we descended 
upon Zug, passing through which and along the 
northern shore of its lake, we reached Arth at one ; 
whence, at half-past two, we commenced the jour- 
ney up the Righi on horseback with a guide. The 
ascent begins a mile east of Goldau, one of the 
villages destroyed by the fall of the Rossberg in 
180d. Conceive of a slip of rock and earth two 
miles long, one fifth of a mile wide, and one hun- 
dred feet thick, loosened from the summit of a 
mountain five thousand feet high, rushing down its 
side into the valley below. It overwhelmed three 
villages with five hundred of their inhabitants, and 
spread desolation over several miles of the valley. 
"We passed through the terrific scene, a chaos of 
rock and rubbish, where Goldau had been. Huge 
blocks of stone, as large some of them as a small 
house, were forced up the Righi far above the site 
of Goldau. There are traditions of similar slides 
from this same mountain in past ages ; and still 
higher up were scattered other blocks which the 
guide said had come on one of those occasions 
from the Rossberg, three or four miles distant. 
We were more than three hours ascending, and 
went up into a cloud, which enveloped the top of 
the mountain, so that we had no sunset. The 
cloud passed away in the night. 



THE RIGHL 105 

The next morning before dawn, with cloaks 
about us, we were out. From the top of this iso- 
lated peak, a mile above the lakes at its base, we 
saw light break slowly over the earth, as yet with- 
out form in the darkness. We had almost a 
glimpse of the creative mystery. We were up in 
the heavens, and beheld the Spirit of God move 
upon the face of the earth. We witnessed with 
magnificent accompaniment the execution of the 
mandate, — Let there be Light. The peaks in the 
sun's path rose first out of darkness to meet the 
coming dawn, their jagged outline fringed with 
gray, then with gold. Day had hardly broke 
about us, when off to the south fifty miles a rosy 
tint shone on the snowy heads of the Bernese Alps, 
the first to . answer the salutation of the Sun. 
Soon, the summits of all the mountains rose up in 
the growing day, a world of peaks, the giant off- 
spring of the Earth awakened by the Morning. 
Below was still twilight. Gradually, light came 
down the mountains and rolled away the veil of 
night from the plain. The Sun grew strong 
enough to send his rays into the valleys, and 
opened the whole sublime spectacle, — a spectacle 
affluent in sublimities, that lifted the Thoughts out 
of their habits, and swelled them to untried dimen- 
sions. The eye embraced an horizon of three 
hundred miles circuit ; the Mind could not em- 
brace the wealth of grandeur and beauty disclosed. 



106 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Towards the west, the view ranged over what from 
such a height seemed an immense plain, bounded 
by the far dim Jura : an indistinct landscape, with 
woods, and rivers, and lakes ; or, rather, a hun- 
dred landscapes melted into one, that took in sev- 
eral of the largest, most fertile cantons, covering 
thousands of square miles. Turning round, we 
stood amazed before the stupendous piles of moun- 
tain. From five to fifty miles away, in a vast 
semicircle, rose in wondrous throng their wild 
bulks, : — rugged granite or glittering snow, tower- 
ing in silent grandeur, an upper kingdom, their 
heads in the sky. They looked alive as with a 
spectral life, brought from the mysterious womb 
of the Earth. You gaze, awed, baffled, in their 
majestic presence, overwhelmed by the very sub- 
limity of size. 

We had come up by the north path, we went 
down by the south. What a walk on a sunny 
morning ! Down we went, nearer and nearer to 
the beautiful lake right under us, plunging deeper 
and deeper into the magical scenery of its shores. 
We reached Weggis in two hours and a half. The 
perpendicular height from the level of the lake to 
the pinnacle of the Righi is about a mile ; in the 
descent I must have walked seven or eight. By 
steamboat we reached Lucerne at one. From 
Lucerne Ave looked back down the lake at the 
throng of mountains that rose out of its waters 



SWITZERLAND. 107 

and crowded the eastern horizon. A slight haze 
made the sun shine on them more warmly. The 
scene was like a vision, so strange was it and 
beautiful. 

The same afternoon we left Lucerne and slept 
at Entelbuch, whence the next day we came to 
Berne, traversing the broad cantons of Lucerne 
and Berne, through a country abundant in crops 
and landscapes. Our attempt to see some of the 
splendors of the Bernese Oberland was frustrated 
by the weather ; so that, after going from Thun to 
Brienz, through their two lakes, we turned back in 
the rain, having merely got a momentary glimpse 
at Interlachen of the Jangfrau. We made a 
long day from Berne to Lausanne, passing through 
Freyburg, the stronghold of Romanism in Switzer- 
land, remarkable for the singularity and pictu- 
resqueness of its position, high up in one of the 
bends of the river Saane ; for its suspension-bridge 
— the longest in the world — one hundred and 
seventy feet above the river which it spans ; for 
its convents and Jesuits' College ; and for the dirti- 
ness of its streets. A transparent morning for 
the drive from Lausanne along the shore of Lake 
Leman to Geneva gave us a clear view of Mont 
Blanc, more than sixty miles off. We reached 
Geneva on the 17th of August. 

Calvin, Rousseau. An old town that has no 
great men is tasteless to the traveller. These two 



108 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

give the flavor to Geneva. Of necessity far apart 
in time, for one would think the spirit of Calvin 
must have been wellnigh worn out or dormant ere 
the little Republic could have engendered a Rous- 
seau. I figure Calvin as gaunt, fleshless ; a man 
of a gritty substance, on whom flesh could not 
grow. A nature tough as steel, unbending as 
granite, — as was needed for his task. With what 
a bold biting lash he scourged the sensualities of 
his time ! How he defied the principalities of the 
earth ! How he scorned the tempests of papal, 
and regal, and popular wrath ! They did but in- 
vigorate his will, sublimate his genius, for the 
building up of a power that was to stretch over 
many nations and endure for ages. He would not 
have been Calvin had he not burned Servetus. 
This crime was the correlative of his virtue. It 
condensed with the heartiness and earnestness, the 
austerity and narrowness of Calvinism. His fol- 
lowers continued and continue to burn Servetuses 
after a different fashion. Honor to the patriarch 
of the Puritans. 

Calvin, who was not born in Geneva, became 
there a ruler ; Rousseau, w r ho was, seems not to 
have been held of much account by his townsmen, 
until lately, when they have erected to him a statue, 
more out of pride probably than love. Rousseau 
was made of anything but granite : an unstable, 
tremulous nature, devoured by passions which yet 



ROUSSEAU. 109 

had not life enough to energize him. His life-long 
sorrows were of the Wertherian kind, but he lacked 
the strength to shoot himself. He was a Werther 
manque. Yet he, too, did a large share of good. 
In a time of coldness and misbelief, he helped to 
bring men to the knowledge of the truths and 
beauties of Nature, and of the resources of their 
hearts, through which knowledge alone can there 
be fruitful love of God. And this indeed, in dif- 
ferent moods, is the office of all thinkers. Even 
Kousseau's sentimentality, insipid or sickening now, 
was savory and healing to his sophisticated gener- 
ation. Had his writings had no other effect than 
to reawaken in the hearts of so many mothers the 
duty of nursing their own infants, he would de- 
serve well of the Christian world. 



XI. 



Valley of the Rhone — The Simplon — Italy — An In- 
cident — Milan — Genoa — Lucca. 

TTTE remained at Geneva a fortnight, preparing 
^ ' for Italy. On the third of September we 
set out by the route of the Simplon, along the 
southern shore of the Lake and up the valley of 
the Rhone, sleeping the first night in Martigny, 
the second in Brieg, at the foot of the pass. The 
valley of the Rhone is generally level, barren, and 
subject to inundation. The long day's drive from 
Martigny to Brieg was of less interest than any 
we had had in Switzerland. The valley, almost 
unpeopled, without deep verdure or the softness 
of tillage, desolate without being wild, offers few 
pictures to the eye ; and the mountains that en- 
close it are bare and cold without elevation enough 
for grandeur. This is one of the worst regions 
for goitre and cretinism. Before noon we stopped 
to change horses in the public square of Sion, the 
capital of the canton of Valais. Happening to be 
a market-day, there was a throng of people in the 
square. An assemblage of such unsightly human 
beings I never beheld. Nearly all looked as if 



ALTERCATION AT BRIEG. Ill 

they were more or less under the blight, whose 
extreme effect is the idiocy called cretinism. 
Mostly of a pallid Indian hue, with lank black 
hair, they had a strange weird look. 

At Brieg, whilst we were getting ready to start 
in the morning, the master of the hotel, whose son 
or son-in-law had the furnishing of horses, came to 
inform me that I should have to take six for the 
ascent. I represented to him that for a carriage 
like mine four would be as sufficient as six, and 
that it would be unreasonable, unjust, and contrary 
to his own printed regulations to impose the addi- 
tional two upon me. The man insisting, I objected, 
then remonstrated, then protested. All to no pur- 
pose. I then sought out the burgomaster of the 
town, to whom with suitable emphasis I represented 
the case. He could not deny that the letter of 
the law was on my side. Whether or not he had 
the power to overrule the postmaster I don't know, 
but at all events my appeal to him had no prac- 
tical result ; the carriage came to the door with 
six horses. I had the poor satisfaction of letting 
the innkeeper hear his conduct worded in strong 
terms, and of threatening him with public expo- 
sure in the guide-books as an extortioner, which 
threat acted most unpleasantly upon his feelings, 
and I hoped kept him uncomfortable for some 
hours. 

What a contrast between the irritations and in- 



112 SCEXES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

dignations of the morning and the calm awed feel- 
ings of the day ! It would be worth while for an 
army to be put into a towering passion at the base 
of the Simplon, just to have all anger quelled by 
the subduing sublimities of its sides and summit. 
As we went up the broad smooth road of Napo- 
leon, the gigantic mountains opened wider and 
wider their grandeurs, heaving up their mighty 
shoulders out of the abysses, at first dark with firs, 
and later, as we neared the top of the pass, shining 
far, far above us in snow that the sun had been 
bleaching for thousands of years. We crossed the 
path of an avalanche, a hundred feet wide, that 
had come down in the spring, making as clean a 
swarth through the big trees as a mower's scythe 
does in a wheatfield. We passed under solid 
arches, built, or cut through the rock, to shield 
travellers against these opaque whirlwinds, these 
congealed hurricanes, this bounding brood of the 
white giantess, begotten on her vast icy flanks by 
the near sun. On the summit of the pass, the 
snowy peaks still high above us, we came to the 
Hospice, and then, descending gently on the south- 
ern side a couple of miles, reached about sunset 
the village of Simplon. At the quiet inn we were 
greeted by two huge dogs of the St. Bernard 
breed, who, with waggings of tail and canine 
smiles, seemed doing the hospitalities of the moun- 
tain. Here we met two English travellers, and 



DESCENDING THE SIMPLON 113 

spent a cheerful evening as the close to such a 
day. After a sound sleep under thick blankets 
we set off early the next morning. What a start- 
ing point, and what a morning's drive ! Ere noon 
we were to be in Italy, and the way to it was 
through the gorges of the Simplon. 

With wheel locked, we went off at a brisk trot. 
The road on the Italian side is much more confined 
than on the northern. Yesterday, we had the 
broad splendors, the expanded grandeurs, of the 
scene ; to-day, its condensed intenser sublimities. 
We soon found ourselves in a tunnel cut through a 
rock ; then sweeping down deeper and deeper into 
what seemed an endless abyss ; close on one side 
of us a black wall of rock, overhanging hundreds, 
thousands, of feet, and darkening the narrow path ; 
as close on the other a foaming torrent, leaping 
down, as it were a wild creature rushing by us to 
head our track. Over dark chasms, under beet- 
ling precipices, across the deafening rush of waters, 
the smooth road carried us without a suggestion of 
danger, the wonders of the sublime pass all exhib- 
ited as freely as to the winged eagle's gaze ; as 
though Nature rejoiced in being thus mastered by 
Art. On we went, downward, downward. At 
last the descent slackens, the stream that had 
bounded and leapt beside us runs among the huge 
rocky fragments, the gorge expands to a valley, 
the fresh foliage of chestnut-trees shadows the 



114 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

road, the valley widens, the mountain is behind 
us, a broad even landscape before us, the air is 
soft, the sun shines hotly on fields where swarthy 
men are at work, — we are in Italy ! It was a 
passage from sublimity to beauty. We were soon 
among vines and strong vegetation. This then is 
Italy. How rich and warm it looks ! We entered 
Duomo d'Ossola, the first town : it was solid and 
time-beaten. In a public square hard by, where 
we stopped for a few minutes, was a plentiful show 
of vegetables and fruit, juicy peaches, and heavy 
bunches of grapes. At a rapid pace we went for- 
ward towards Lake Maggiore. These are the 
" twice-glorified fields of Italy." This is beautiful, 
passionate Italy, the land of so much genius, and 
so much vice, and so much glory. This is the 
land, for centuries the centre of the world, that 
in boyhood and in manhood is so mixed in our 
thoughts, with its double column of shining names 
familiar to Christendom. It was late in the after- 
noon when at Fariolo we came upon the beautiful 
Lake. For ten or twelve miles the roacl ran on a 
terrace, whose wall was washed by its waters. 
About sunset we passed the Borromean Islands, 
the evening clear and bland. It was after night- 
fall when we entered Aroha. 

We had to-day an incident, which gave assurance 
that we were arrived in Italy, as convincing as 
did the beauty and fruitfulness lavished upon this 



AN INCIDENT. 115 

chosen land. Opposite in character to them, that 
have their source in bounty and love ; this, in 
penury of spirit and hate. It came, too, from one 
of "God's Vicegerents on Earth," although its 
nature smacked of paternity in the Prince of Dark- 
ness. God floods his creation with liberty and 
light, the which his vicegerents, kings, and popes, 
are ever busy to smother, lest men be maddened 
and blinded by the too free use of heaven's best 
gifts. God's vicegerents ! his counterworkers 
rather. They are oftenest the very antidotes of 
light. Their God is Power, whom they worship 
with human sacrifices. Monarchies and hierarchies 
are the tokens of man's weakness. The stronger 
they, the weaker he. As men strengthen, they 
dwindle. They are like props planted beside a 
young tree, that, having insidiously taken root, 
divert into themselves nourishment due to it, so 
that the tree languishes and perishes, while they 
thrive and wax strong. They are the bridle put 
into the horse's mouth in the fable, for his help, as 
he foolishly thought, which became the instrument 
of his enslavement. They are the stewards of 
Custom, which is the tyranny of the lower human 
faculties over the higher. I once heard, when 
a boy, a stump-speaker at a barbecue declare, 
that a visit to Europe had made him a democrat. 
The process whereby this effect was wrought will 
be clear to most Americans who sojourn here for a 



116 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

time. As counterpoise to this, it will be but fair 
to mention that German prince, who, becoming 
tainted with republicanism, was sent to the United 
States to be cured thereof, — and was cured. 
That man deserved a throne. But to the inci- 
dent. 

At the Piedmontese frontier, the custom-house 
officer, who, as usual, examined but one of our 
trunks, hit upon the one that contained books. 
" Ah ! Books," said he ; "I must make a list of 
them." Hereupon he ordered his assistant to take 
them all out, my representations that they were 
solely for my own use, and that I was merely pass- 
ing through Piedmont, having no effect. On first 
alighting, I heard one say to the other, " 11 Signore 
e militare "; a conclusion which was probably dis- 
pelled by the sight of the contents of the trunk, 
and not, I think, to my advantage. The making 
of the list was a long process, the officer having to 
write the titles that were not Italian letter by letter. 
The task seemed to him a hard and unaccustomed 
one. The subordinate displayed the title of each 
volume beside his principal, I superintending the 
orthography. The assistant handled the books 
carefully and even tenderly., as though in his eyes 
they were things precious. The poor man, I fan- 
cied, looked at me with an expression of deferential 
regard, as one who possessed and had free access 
to such a treasure. Among them was Silvio Pel- 



VEXATIONS. 117 

lico's story of his imprisonment, in Italian. He 
turned it in his hands, looked into it, gently shuf- 
fling over the leaves, and quietly glancing from the 
volume to me, not at all as if he would beg it, but 
as if he transferred towards me some of the feeling 
the book awakened in him. He probably had heard 
vaguely of Pellico's martyrdom. The list finished, 
the books were repacked, and the trunk was leaded, 
that is, tied round with stout twine, over whose 
knot was pressed, with long pincers, a small leaden 
seal. The trunk was replaced on the carriage, 
and a paper was given me certifying its contents 
and the operation it had undergone. This over- 
hauling and list-taking was but the commencement 
of the vexation. The next day, — to make an end 
of the story, — on passing out of Piedmont, an 
officer was sent with us to see the sealed trunk 
delivered unbroken at the custom-house of Lom- 
bardy, some distance off. It was just as if I had 
had a criminal in company, and Piedmont warned 
Austria of his danger. Books, in truth, are crim- 
inals in both countries. On arriving at Milan I 
was obliged, before driving to the hotel, to go first 
to the custom-house, to leave in safe-keeping the 
mysterious trunk, as big with mischief as the Gre- 
cian Horse to the Trojans, but luckily, by the vigi- 
lance of Piedmont, its diabolical purport was revealed 
to Austria. Quitting Milan, I had to call for it, to 
leave it again at the Pieclmontese custom-house on 



118 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

reentering Piedmont on the road to Genoa ; for I 
found that otherwise, owing to a press of business 
there, I should be delayed two or three hours. It 
came after me the next day to Genoa, where, not 
to have any more frontier troubles, I left it, to be 
sent to Florence, which it reached several days 
later, bringing with it a bill against me for separate 
travelling-charges of ten dollars. This affair, tri- 
fling as it appears, marred the enjoyment of our 
first days in Italy. It makes a man, too, feel little, 
to find himself utterly defenceless against such piti- 
ful abuses from low officials. 

Through the bountiful plains of Lombardy, we 
had a short day's drive from Arona to Milan, pass- 
ing near the first battle-field between Scipio and 
Hannibal. Entering Milan by the arch of the Sim- 
plon, we came first upon the broad Parade, or Place 
d'Armes, where the cannon are kept always loaded, 
Milan being the capital of the Austrian Lombardo- 
Venetian Provinces, and residence of the Imperial 
Viceroy. The two principal objects of Milan are, 
Leonardo da Vinci's great picture of the last sup- 
per, and the cathedral, a vast, beautiful, Gothic 
structure of white marble, from whose roof ascends 
a forest of light pinnacles and marble needles, sur- 
mounted by statues. Around, upon, and within 
the church are two or three thousand statues, num- 
bers of them the effigies of benefactors. Conspicu- 
ous on a pinnacle was one of Napoleon. A gift of 



MILAN. — GENOA. 119 

cash to the church will obtain for the donor the 
honor of a statue, its prominence and elevation 
being measured by the amount bestowed. What 
inventive genius these solemn gentlemen of the 
robe have always shown in unloosing the clasp of 
money clutching man ! What a scent they have 
for the trail of gold ! A traveller relates, that, 
passing through " the noble little State of Connecti- 
cut," and stopping to bait in one of its dreariest 
townships, he asked a tall, raw-boned man, who was 
measuring him keenly with his eye, what the people 
did in so barren a country for a living : " When we 
can catch a stranger, we skin him ; and when we 
can't, we skin one another." I defy the leanest- 
native in the stoniest part of Connecticut to devise 
the means more shrewdly for compassing a given 
dollar than these ghostly bachelors. From the 
roof of the cathedral we looked down into the 
opulent city beneath, and far away over the rich 
plain of Lombardy. To the west, as distant as the 
pass of the Simplon, was visible the snowy head of 
Mount Rosa. 

We left Milan after forty-eight hours, and were 
a day and a half on the road to Genoa, sleeping 
the first night in a clean good inn at Novi. Some 
miles out of Milan, not far from Pavia, we stopped 
to see the famous Chartreuse, with its beautiful 
church and dozen little chapels, each one enriched 
with precious marbles exquisitely wrought and in- 



120 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

laid, whereon millions have been spent in work and 
materials. Madame de Stael said, that Genoa has 
the air of having been built by a Congress of 
Kings. We walked through its streets of palaces, 
searching the palaces themselves for pictures, which 
is the chief and pleasantest occupation of the 
stranger passing through Italian cities. From the 
best points Ave had a survey of the town and har- 
bor. The port is very active, and Genoa is grow- 
ing in population, commerce, and wealth. What a 
country this beautiful Italy would be, if it could 
drive out the foreigner, if it could shake off eccle- 
siastical domination, if it could bind itself up into 
a single nation, if — but there are too many ifs. 

We were glad to find ourselves on the third day 
out of Genoa on the road along the shore of the 
Mediterranean. It takes some time to get accus- 
tomed to Italian cities and ways. One has, too, a 
feeling of loneliness, which custom never entirely 
overcomes, in a large crowded town, where you 
know not a soul, and have speech with none but 
hirelings ; so that, after having " seen all the 
sights," you are cheered by departure, and smile 
upon the Cerberus at the gate, who stops your car- 
riage to learn from your passport that you have the 
right to go. Starting from Genoa in the afternoon, 
we slept the first night at Chiavari, the second at 
Massa. The Mediterranean on the right, valleys 
and hills on the left ; the road winding, mounting, 



ITALY. 121 

descending with the movements of the shore, where 
land and sea are gently interlocked ; compact 
towns nestled in the green bosom of valleys, the 
mountains behind, the sea before them ; vines grace- 
fully heavy with purple grapes, festooned from tree 
to tree ; — these are the chief features of the day- 
long picture. From Massa, seated by the water, 
with a shield of marble mountains against the north, 
we started early on the sunny morning of the 16th 
of September, wishing to reach Florence before 
dark. We soon left the sea, and crossing the 
mountain range, went down on the other side into 
the territory of Lucca, among hills clothed with 
chestnut and olive, and fields the gardens of Plenty, 
the sun shining warmly, the earth breathing fra- 
grantly through its leafy abundance. Valery, in 
his excellent guide-book, recommended to me by 
Wordsworth, (Murray's was not yet published,) says 
of Lucca : " Un certain perfectionnement social 
et philosophique parait avoir prevalu pendant long 
temps dans ce petit etat, qui n'eut jamais de Je- 
suites. L'Encyclopedie y fut reimprimee en 28 
vol. folio, 1758-71." Surely the Lucchese were 
wise to keep out the Jesuits ; for priestly venom, 
which so poisons in Italy the cup of life, festers 
nowhere to bitterer virulence than in that dehu- 
manized corporation. But the letting in of such 
a flood of French philosophy, as is implied by a 
reprint of the renowned Uncyclojjedie, that was 



122 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

a questionable proceeding. Yet, after all, Vol- 
taire, Diderot, and their associates, sharpened and 
helped to disenthrall the intellect of the Christian 
world ; they opened the eyes of men, though they 
could not tell them what it was best to look at. 
Valery, whose book is that of a man of letters, 
and is a mine of minute historical, biographical, 
and miscellaneous information, lets go no oppor- 
tunity of bringing France and Frenchmen before 
his readers. Always cheerful and polished, he is 
a thorough zealous Frenchman, who neither dis- 
turbs nor is himself disturbed by the stiifest nation- 
alism of another. 

While changing horses in Lucca, we were tempted 
by voluble domestiques de place with enumeration 
of the sights of the town ; but our eyes and hearts 
were set upon Florence. The postmaster ques*- 
tioned us eagerly how many carriages were behind. 
Now is his autumnal harvest. The English, to 
whom all other travellers are so much indebted for 
the cleanliness and comfort of the inns on the 
Continent, are swarming southward. Soon after 
quitting Lucca we entered Tuscany, — proud Tus- 
cany, in bygone times the intellectual centre of 
Italy, the home of her language, the warm nest 
of genius, the cradle of her giants, of Dante, of 
Michael Angelo, of Boccaccio, of Petrarca, of 
Leonardo da Vinci, of Machiavelli, of Galileo. 
By Pistoia and Prato, we drove along the south- 



ITALY. 123 

western base of the Appenines, and through field? 
closely tilled up to the trunks of the olive, the mul- 
berry, and the vine, and among white villas, glisten- 
ing in the western sun, we approached the high 
walls of Florence. 



XII. 



Florence — Scientific Congress — Climate — Occupations 
and Pastimes — Music — Art — Society — Painting and 
Sculpture. 

"VTATURE and Art contend the one with the 
-*-* other in beautifying Florence. Except west- 
ward, where the Arno flows towards the sea, all 
about her are gentle hills that have come down 
from mountains, visible here and there in the dis- 
tance. The Appenines and the Arno have scooped 
out a site which man has made much of. The 
moment you pass out of almost any one of the 
gates, smooth gentle paths tempt you up heights, 
as if eager to exhibit some of the fairest landscapes 
even of Italy. In twenty or thirty minutes, you 
turn round to a view embracing the dome-crowned 
town, with its spacious leafy gardens, and far- 
stretching valley, and the countless heights and 
mountains which, bestudded with white villas, 
churches, convents, and clothed with the vine and 
olive, lie all round " the most beautiful daughter 
of Rome." Towards sunset, seen through that 
purple haze, which gives it a voluptuous, sleepy 
aspect, the landscape, so beautiful from its forms 



FLORENCE. 125 

and combinations, looks almost like an illusion, a 
magical diorama. Carefully guarded within the 
walls are many of the loveliest offspring of the 
Arts, ever fresh with the grace of genius ; without 
them, Nature unrolls her indestructible beauties, 
heightened by Art and the associations of creative 
thought. Within the same hour you may stand 
before the Venus of Cleomenes and on the tower 
of Galileo, which overlooks Florence and the vale 
of the Arno, — before the Madonna of Raphael and 
on the " top of Fiesole." 

Even where the accumulations of Time are the 
most choice, the curiosities outnumber by much 
the beauties ; so that the sight-seer has some weary 
and almost profitless hours, and rejoices occasion- 
ally like Sterne, when the keys could not be found 
of a church he went to see. It is true, sight- 
showing has become so lucrative, that he seldom has 
that pleasant disappointment. Neither, on the 
other hand, does one like to miss anything, nor to 
do by halves what one has come so far to do. 
There are things, too, that are not much in the 
seeing, but that it is well to carry away the mem- 
ory of having seen. The rapid traveller through 
crowded Italy must therefore work nimbly with 
body and mind, from morn till night, to accom- 
plish his labor of love. As we have the winter 
before us in Florence, we proceed -here in a more 
idle and gentlemanly way. We can lounge among 



126 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

the marvels of the Pitti and the Uffizii, and let the 
mood of the moment prompt us what to sit before, 
without self-reproach, postponing the rest till to- 
morrow, or next week, or next month ; or we can 
even let a whole day go over, without setting eyes 
on a picture, or a statue, or a church. Some of 
our first and pleasantest hours were spent in the 
studios and company of our own sculptors. It is 
much for a stranger to have here fellow-country- 
men of character and intelligence, who rank with 
the best as artists. 

The first fortnight after our arrival the town was 
enlivened by the presence of a Scientific Congress, 
numbering nearly nine hundred members, mostly 
Italians, to whom the amiable Grand Duke did the 
honors of his capital in graceful and munificent 
style. Among his hospitalities was a dinner given 
at the Poygio Imperiale, one of his villas a mile 
out of the Roman Gate. Nine hundred guests 
were received in the suite of elegant drawing- 
rooms on the first floor, and sat down in the second 
to tables supplied with as much taste as luxury. 
It was a brilliant animated scene. After dinner, 
toasts were drank, and short sprightly speeches 
made amidst vivas and bravos. The guests were 
all carried to and from the villa in carriages fur- 
nished by the host. As we drove back in the 
evening, my three Italian chance-companions vied 
in commendation of the courtesy and liberality of 



SCIENTIFIC CONGRESS. 127 

the Grand Duke. At last, one of them, a tall, 
stout, comfortable, shrewd-looking man of about 
fifty, a priest too, I think, informed us, that he had 
come against orders, for he lived in the dominions 
of the Pope (who, with the arch-priestly dread of 
light, prohibits his subjects from attending these 
Congresses), and that he was the only representa- 
tive from the papal states. To this disclosure the 
other two said not a word, and, I dare say, what in 
me rose as a suspicion mounted in them to pretty 
nearly a brimming conviction, namely, that our 
portly papal fellow-passenger was there for the 
purpose of taking notes quite other than scientific. 
The crowning scene to the proceedings of the 
Congress was its last meeting in full session, in the 
large hall of the old Palace. Seven or eight hun- 
dred Italians, — educated men, numbers of them 
men of thought, — a noble-looking assemblage of 
heads. The purpose of their meeting I overlooked 
in the bare fact of such a convocation in that hall, 
where in the olden times of popular sovereignty 
were heard the stirring accents of free delibera- 
tion. May it be an omen * of better days, when 
an assemblage as large and enlightened shall meet 
on the same spot for even higher objects, and with 



* This omen has heen fulfilled, and the Italian people, uprisen 
for independence and freedom, have already conquered largely of 
hoth, and have thus entered the path of political and religious ad- 
vancement. — [1863.] 



128 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

the new vivifying feeling that at last they have 
become once more thoroughly men ! 

Florence, May. 1842. — One can lead here for 
a season an intellectual life without much mental 
effort ; with enough of activity to keep it in a re- 
ceptive state, and the mind will lay up stores of 
impressions, to ripen hereafter into thought. The 
Past opens to the stranger rich pastures, wherein, 
if he can but feed with healthy instincts, he will 
assimilate into himself abundantly of the old. The 
creative spirits of bygone periods invite him to 
communion ; all they ask of him is sympathy with 
their labor. Even the poets exact not for the 
enjoyment of them that vigorous cooperation in 
the reader which Wordsworth justly intimates is 
necessary from his. The best Italian poetry is 
more superficial than the best English. It is 
based upon, not also impregnated throughout with 
thought. It has more of music and sentiment, of 
form and grace. Only Dante obliges you to gather 
yourself up as for a fraternal wrestle. Alfieri at 
first somewhat, until you have found the key to 
his mind, which has not many wards. 

A scale of the occupations, pastimes, idleness, 
of a semi-passive half-year in Florence, would 
have at its basis the walks and drives in the Cas- 
eins and environs. But first, a word about the 
climate. It is much like ours of the Middle 
States, except that our winter is colder and drier. 



OCCUPATIONS AND PASTIMES. 129 

An American is surprised at this similarity on 
arriving in Italy, having got his notions from Eng- 
lish writers, who, coming from their cloudy north- 
ern island, are enchanted with the sunny temper- 
ance of an Italian winter, and oppressed by the 
heats of summer. The heat is not greater than 
it is in Maryland, and our winter is finer, certainly, 
than that of Florence, being drier, and, though 
colder, at the same time sunnier. As with us, the 
autumn, so gloomy in England, is cheerful, clear, 
and calm, holding on till Christmas. They have 
hardly more than two cold months. Already in 
March the Spring is awake, and soon drives back 
Winter, first into the highest Appenines, where 
he clings for a brief space, and thence retreats 
up to the topmost Alps, not to reappear for nine 
or ten months. Nor is that beautiful child of 
the light and air, the Italian sunset, more beau- 
tiful than the American. 

Walking or driving ; — the opera, theatre, and 
company ; — the galleries of painting and sculp- 
ture, and the studios of artists ; — reading and 
study at home. Thus, and in this gradation would 
I divide the hours of a man of leisure in Florence, 
especially if he be one whose nerves oblige him 
to lead a life of much more gentlemanly idleness 
than with a perfectly eupeptic stomach he would 
choose. I put walking and driving first, as being, 
although the most innocent, the most absolute 



130 SCENES AXD THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

forms of idleness. The Caserne, a public prome- 
nade, just out of the western gate of the town, 
stretching a couple of miles down the right bank 
of the Arno, cannot be surpassed in situation and 
resources by anything similar in Europe. In warm 
weather you have close shade, and in cold, the 
sun all along the margin of the stream, with a 
hedge and groves of pine and ilex as a cover 
against the tramontana or north-wind. , Thither 
on Sundays and other holidays resort the people 
at large, and every day in fine weather the free 
and the fashionable, including, among the former, 
monks, white and brown, whom I see here almost 
daily in shoals, with a sigh at the waste of so much 
fine muscle. 

On the Continent, not a town of twenty thou- 
sand inhabitants, nay, of fifteen or ten, but has 
its theatre, for operas or comedies at stated sea- 
sons. Music and the theatre are not, as with us, 
an occasional accidental amusement, but an habit- 
ual resource : they have an honorable place in the- 
annual domestic budget, even of families of small 
means. Music is part of the mental food of the 
Italians. It is to them a substitute for the stronger 
aliment of freer countries. May it not be that 
the bounds set to mental development in other 
spheres are in part the cause of the fuller culti- 
vation of this ? Nature always strives to compen- 
sate herself for losses and lesions. Life, if cramped 



MUSIC. 181 

on one side, will often swell proportion ably in an- 
other. Music has been to Italy a solace and a 
vent in her long imprisonment. This is not, of 
course, an endeavor to account for the origin of 
musical genius in Italy : original aptitudes lie far 
deeper than human reason can ever sound: but 
that the people has musical habits is probably in 
a measure owing to such influences. I do not 
remember to have heard an Italian whistle. They 
are too musical, the emptiest of them, for that 
arid futility. They sing as they go for want of 
thought ; and late at night it is most cheerful to 
hear, moving through the street, laden with airs 
from operas, mellow voices that die sweetly away 
in the stillness, to be followed by others, sometimes 
several in chorus. To me there is always some- 
thing soothing and hopeful in this spontaneous 
buoyant melody, the final sounds of the Italian's 
day. 

As nothing in Art is more marketable than mu- 
sical talent, London and Paris take and keep to 
themselves the first adepts. To the gifted song- 
sters of the South, — whose warmth seems essen- 
tial to the perfecting of the human musical organ, 
— showers of gold make amends for showers of 
orange-blossoms, and the dazzling illumination of 
palaces and sumptuous theatres for the brilliancy 
of their native sky. Italy scarcely hears, in the 
fulness of their powers, her Pastas, Malibrans, 



132 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Grisis, Lablaches, Rubinis. Their gifts once dis- 
cerned, they are wafted across the Alps, to share 
the caresses, the triumphs, the largesses of the 
great northern capitals. When their career is run, 
the most of them come back to their never-for- 
gotten home. The dear, beautiful, sorrow-stricken 
mother, who gave them their cradles, — and who 
alone could give them, — gives them, too, a tomb. 
Florence, therefore, has no richly equipt opera. 
In Italy itself, Naples and Milan have choice be- 
fore her. 

The opera is not a perfectly pure form of Art. 
It is a forced marriage between language and 
action on the one side, and music. The poetry 
of the language is smothered by the music, while 
on the other hand words often clog the wings of 
melody. Language and action are definite, music 
is vague. In their union, the indefiniteness of 
music is resisted, the distinctness of words is ob- 
literated by a haze, albeit a golden haze. In the 
compromise, whereby the union is brought about, 
some violence is done to the nature of each. The 
effect of music is best when its source is invisible. 
This mode of presentation accords with its nature ; 
for music is a voice from the depths of the infinite, 
— a disembodied spirit, delivering its message 
through the least substantial medium of access, — 
sound. The glaring showiness, the pomp and cor- 
poreal effort of the stage, are an obstruction to its 



EFFECT OF ART 133 

airy aspirations. While to the dramatic reality 
the music imparts a lightness and poetic trans- 
parence, by these coarse material forms some of its 
own life is absorbed. 

Of all Art the genuine effect is, to exalt the 
tone of the mind, — to refine its temper. Even the 
knowledge communicated is but incidental, alto- 
gether subsidiary to a fruitfuller gain. Facts, 
history, Art uses merely as vehicles, to convey to 
the mind its offerings of beauty. The results of 
Art are not, like scientific acquirements, tangible, 
measurable ; they are chiefly in the mood awak- 
ened. The deepest, grandest truths, which it is 
the function of Art to reveal and illustrate, are 
presented in an indirect way. A noble poem 
leaves the mind of the reader in an expanded 
state. He feels a higher, clearer consciousness 
of life, a broader hope, a refreshed content. 
Available facts have not been piled away in his 
memory ; but his best susceptibilities have been 
stimulated ; his nature has been attuned on a 
higher key than common ; he has a quickened 
sensation of freedom, of nobility. He is lifted 
into a higher state of being, and in that state is 
apter for the performance of all practical duties. 
Herein consists the noble usefulness of poetry, of 
Art. This mental exaltation, this disinthralment 
of the spirit from all gross bonds, good music 
especially never fails to produce. Its opening 



134 SCEXES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

voice is a grateful summons to the spiritual part 
of our nature. The glare, bustle, and complex 
movements of the stage make a confusion of 
effects. The spectacle, busying the senses, un- 
strings the rapt intentness of the spirit. The joy- 
ful calm and solemnity of the religious mood, 
always created by the best music, is ruffled. 

For a really good society, two things are requi- 
site : a high state of culture, and the habitual 
reunion of the most cultivated through genial and 
intellectual sympathies. But as social distinctions, 
in part factitious, prevail even in republican coun- 
tries, this fusion into unity under high influences 
is nowhere more than partially practicable. Gross 
and accidental advantages are still prized — and 
that even by the intellectual — above those that 
are inherent and refined. They who possess 
watch them jealously. Instead of the salve, 
printed in large letters on Goethe's threshold, 
they would like to inscribe on theirs, " No admit- 
tance to strangers " ; that is, to those who have 
not the same interests to guard. Against a par- 
tition of their power they in various ways protest ; 
and now with the more emphasis, from a percep- 
tion of the growing disregard of them. The land 
of Promise, where men and things shall be valued 
at their just worth, is much 'too remote for its re- 
moteness to be measured ; and we can only dis- 
cover that we are less far from it by a comparison 



SCIENCE AND LETTERS. 135 

of where we are with where we have been, — a 
comparison which, if made broadly and with a free 
-spirit, will, in other domains of life as well as in 
this, induce hopefulness and trust. 

The second requisite, therefore, is found, from 
general causes, as little in Florence as elsewhere, 
and less than in the great capitals. As to the 
first, Florence has its creditable circle of men of 
Letters, Science, and Art. But while with those 
to whom rank and affluence give opportunities of 
education they are but slenderly connected, they 
are at the same time sundered from the masses ; 
they and the multitude cannot duly cooperate ; 
their light scarcely pierces the blighting shade cast 
upon the people by the tangled brambles of priestly 
abuse. A community under Roman ecclesiastical 
dominion cannot attain to the highest state of cul- 
ture possible in its age. By the growth and diffu- 
sion of knowledge, through the long peace and the 
intercommunication among nations, the bonds of 
episcopal tyranny have been somewhat loosened in 
the Italian States. The body of the scientific and 
literary men have of course always lived in secret 
protest against this curse. But though they hate 
the tyrants and contemn their impostures, they 
cannot escape from them. The mind is stinted 
and thwarted in its wants and aspirations. Thought 
itself, free in the dungeon and on the rack, lan- 
guishes where it has not free utterance by speech 



136 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

and pen. That under this long double load of 
political and religious despotism the Italians have 
still kept alive the sacred fire of knowledge, — have, 
through the thickest atmosphere, shot up into the 
sky, high enough for all Europe to see them, lights, 
poetic and scientific, — proves what deep sources 
of life, what elasticity and tenacity of nature there 
are in this oppressed people. Let those who for 
their abject state would despise them think of this, 
and they will perhaps wonder that the Italians are 
not even more prostrate. 

The political despotism to which Tuscany was 
subjected by the first Medici has been, since the 
extinction of that bad breed, a paternal one, under 
a branch of the house of Austria. Still, though 
mild and forbearing in the hands of the present 
worthy Grand Duke, and his father, so justly be- 
loved by the Tuscans, it is a despotism (and noth- 
ing else would be permitted by the other states of 
Italy), and, as such, crushes in the people some of 
the richest elements of life. Florence, therefore, 
cannot be in advance of its sisters in social or- 
ganization and spirit. Like other cities of its 
compass, it has nothing better than what, by a 
combination of the figures Amplification and Hy- 
perbole, is termed "Good Society," — composed 
here, as elsewhere, of those who have inherited, or 
by wealth acquired, social rank, — embracing in 
Florence, besides the native noblesse and diplo- 



FASHIONABLE IDLERS. 137 

matic corps, a large body of " nobility and gentry " 
— in the phrase of the English newspapers — 
from other lands, who for a season take up their 
abode in the Tuscan capital. The occupation of 
this circle is idleness. Start not at the apparent 
solecism. It is but apparent : for, to people w T ho 
are not urged to exertion either by body or spirit ; 
whose infinite natures are in a measure circum- 
scribed within the animal bounds of the ephemera 
of the fields, their whole life revolving in a quick 
diurnal orbit; whose minds, left void by exemp- 
tion, — not, however, entirely wilful, — from active 
duties and labors, are obliged, in order to oppose 
the pressure of time, literally to make something 
out of nothing ; — to people thus dislocated from 
the busy order of nature it becomes an occupa- 
tion, requiring method and forethought, to resist 
the weight of their waking hours, and maintain the 
daily fight with ennui. Their insipidity of life is 
seasoned by a piquant ingredient supplied by 
clouds of little cupids, — imps that, with their 
inborn perverseness, choose here to hover over 
nuptial couches, assaulting the hymeneal citadel 
with such vigor that all, says dame Gossip, have 
not strength to withstand them. Their chief pub- 
lic performances are, to support the opera, and 
adorn the Caseine with their equipages and toi- 
lettes. 

The Galleries of Painting and Sculpture come 



138 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

next in the scale, on which I have subdivided the 
hours of a stranger's Florentine sojourn. They 
might, without inaccuracy, take their place under 
the head of company. Genuine works of Art 
speak to you more clearly than most tongue-wag- 
ging speakers. In them is a soul which puts itself 
at once in connection with yours. When at Ant- 
werp, I never walked on the ramparts without feel- 
ing what companionship there was in the spire of 
the Cathedral : the mind felt its presence con- 
stantly and cordially. A shot-tower, you will say, 
of equal height, that met the eyes whenever they 
were turned towards the town, would have been 
just as much company. With this difference : 
that the one would be the company of a ponderous 
bore, the other that of a buoyant poet. 

Whenever your mood is that way bent, you 
betake yourself to the Grand Duke's residence, 
the Pitti Palace. Passing through its wide portal, 
you ascend, under the guidance of civil guards, 
by broad flights of steps, to a suite of spacious 
apartments, where are lodged Raphael, and Titian, 
and Claude, and Rubens, and Leonardo da Vinci, 
and Guiclo. From room to room, through a long 
series, you converse with these great spirits for 
hours together if you choose. Every day in the 
year, except Sundays and holidays, these reful- 
gent rooms are thus courteously thrown open. 
The servant at the door, who takes charge of your 



THE GALLERIES. 139 

cane or umbrella, is not permitted even to accept 
anything for the service. A noble hospitality is 
this, to which strangers are so accustomed that 
they do not always duly value it. The Gallery 
attached to the old Palace over the Uffizii, where 
is the Tribune with its priceless treasures, daily 
invites the stranger in the same liberal way. 



XIII. 

Greenough — Powers — Clevinger. 

A MONG the studios of living Artists in Flor- 
^*- ence, the most attractive naturally to an 
American are those of his fellow-countrymen. 
Nor do they need national partiality to make them 
attractive. The first American who gained a rep- 
utation in the severest of the Fine Arts was 
Horatio Greenough. For some years he was 
the only sculptor we had, and worthily did he lead 
the van in a field where triumphs awaited us. I 
happened, five or six years ago, to travel from 
Boston southward with him and Powers, and heard 
Greenough then warmly second Powers' s inclina- 
tion, and urge him to hasten to Italy. Powers 
was soon followed by Clevinger, who, in turn, re- 
ceived from him encouraging words. The three 
are now working here harmoniously together. 

Artists of merit have seldom much to show at 
their rooms ; for their works are either made to 
order, and sent to their destinations as fast as fin- 
ished, or they are sold almost as soon as seen. 
Sculptors have an advantage over painters, inas- 
much as they retain the plaster casts after which 



GREEN OUGH. 141 

each work is chiselled in marble. As Greenough 
does not always finish the clay model up to the 
full design in his mind, but leaves the final touches 
to the chisel itself, he 13 not forward to exhibit his 
casts taken from the clay, the prototypes of the 
forms that have been distributed to different quar- 
ters of the world. He has just now in his studio, 
recently finished in marble for a Hungarian noble- 
man, an exquisite figure of a child, seated on a 
bank gazing at a butterfly that has just lighted on 
the back of its upraised hand. In the conception 
there is that union of simplicity and significance 
so requisite to make a work of plastic Art, espe- 
cially of sculpture, effective, and which denotes 
the genial Artist. The attitude of the figure has 
the pliable grace of unconscious childhood ; the 
limbs are nicely wrought ; and the intelligence, 
curiosity, delight, implied and expressed in its 
gaze at the beautiful little winged wonder before 
it, impart vividly to the work the moral element ; 
wanting the which, a production, otherwise com- 
mendable, is not lifted up to one of the high plat- 
forms of Art. The mind of the spectator is drawn 
into that of the beautiful child, whose inmost fac- 
ulties are visiblv budding in the effort to take in 
the phenomenon before it. The perfect bodily 
stillness of the little flexible figure, under the con- 
trol of its mental intentness, is denoted by the 
coming forth of a lizard from the side of the bank. 



142 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

This is one of those delicate touches whereby the 
artist knows how to beautify and heighten the 
chief effect. 

Another work of high character, which Green- 
ough is just about to finish in marble, is a head of 
Lucifer, of colossal size. The countenance has the 
beauty of an archangel, with the hard, uncertain 
look of an archangel fallen. Here is a noble mould 
not filled up with the expression commensurate to 
it. There is no exaggeration to impress the be- 
holder at once with the malevolence of the original 
which the sculptor had in his imagination. The 
sinister nature lies concealed, as it were, in the 
features, and comes out gradually after they have 
been some time contemplated. The beauty of the 
countenance is not yet blasted by the deformity of 
the mind. 

Greenough's Washington had left Italy before 
my arrival in Florence. By those best qualified to 
judge, it was here esteemed a fine work. Let me 
say a few words about the nudity of this statue, for 
which it has been much censured in America. 

Washington exemplifies the might of principle. 
He was a great man without ambition, and the 
absence of ambition was a chief source of his great- 
ness. The grandeur of his character is infinitely 
amplified by its abstract quality ; that is, by its 
cleanness from all personality. Patriotism, resting 
on integrity of soul and broad massive intellect, is 



GREENOUGH'S WASHINGTON. 143 

in him uniquely embodied. The purity and eleva- 
tion of his nature were the basis of his success. 
Had his rare military and civil genius been united 
to the selfishness of a Cromwell, they would have 
lost much of their effectiveness upon a generation 
warring for the rights of man. Not these, but the 
unexampled union of these with uprightness, with 
stainless disinterestedness, made him Washington. 
If the Artist clothes him with the toga of civil 
authority, he represents the great statesmen; if 
with uniform and spurs, the great General. Rep- 
resenting him in either of these characters, he 
gives preference to the one over the other, and his 
image of Washington is incomplete, for he was 
both. Bik he was more than either or both ; he 
was a truly great man, in whom statesmanship and 
generalship were subordinate to supreme nobleness 
of mind and moral power. The majesty of his 
nature, the immortality of his name, as of one com- 
bining the morally sublime with commanding prac- 
tical genius, demand the purest form of artistic 
representation, — the nude.' To invest the colossal 
marble image of so towering, so everlasting a man, 
with the insignia of temporary office, is to fail in 
presenting a complete image of him. Washington, 
to be best seen, ought to be beheld, not as he came 
from the hand of the tailor, but as he came from 
the hand of God. Thus, the image of him will be 
at once real and ideal. 



144 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

That Greenougk's fellow-countrymen, by whose 
order this statue was made, would have preferred 
it draped, ought to be of no weight, even if such a 
wish had accompanied the order. To the true 
Artist, the laws of Art are supreme against all 
wishes or commands. He is the servant of Art 
only. If, bending to the uninformed will of his 
employers, he executes commissions in a way that 
is counter to the requirements of Art, he sinks 
from the Artist into the artisan. Nor can he, by 
stooping to uncultivated tastes, popularize Art ; he 
deadens it, and so makes it ineffective. But by 
presenting it to the general gaze in its severe sim- 
plicity, and thus, through grandeur and beauty of 
form, lifting the beholder up into the ideal region 
of Art, — by this means he can popularize it. He 
gradually awakens and creates a love for it, and 
thus he gains a wide substantial support to Art in 
the sympathy for it engendered, the which is the 
only true furtherance from without that the Artist 
can receive. 

A statue which is a genuine work of Art can- 
not be appreciated, nay, cannot be seen, without 
thought. The imagination must be active in the 
beholder, must w r ork with the perception. Other- 
wise, what he looks at is to him only a superficial 
piece of handicraft. The form before him should 
breed in him conjecture of its inward nature and 
capacity, and by its beauty or stamp of intellect 



GREENO UGH. — PO WERS. 145 

and soul lead him up into the domain of human 
possibilities. The majestic head and figure of 
Washington will reveal and confirm the greatness 
of his character, for the body is the physiognomy 
of the mind. That broad mould of limbs, that 
stern calmness, that dignity of brow, will carry the 
mind beyond the scenes of the Revolution, and 
swell the heart with thoughts and hopes of the 
nobleness and destiny of man. Let the beholder 
contemplate this fine statue calmly and thought- 
fully ; let him, by dint of contemplation, raise him- 
self up to the point of view of the artist, and it 
will have on him something of this high effect. He 
will forget that Washington ever wore a coat, and 
will turn away from this noble colossal form in a 
mood that will be wholesome to his mental state. 

This attempt to justify Greenough's work by no 
means implies a condemnation of other conceptions 
for a statue of Washington. A colossal figure, but 
partially draped, seated, — the posture of repose 
and authority — Greenough's conception — seems 
to me the most elevated and appropriate. Ar- 
tists have still scope for a figure entirely draped 
in military or civil costume, on horseback or stand- 
ing. Only, this representation of Washington will 
not be so high and complete as the other. 

Powers left America with a goodly cargo of 
busts in plaster, carrying them to Italy, there to 
execute them in marble. With these he opened 



146 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

his studio in Florence. The first that were finished 
he sent to the public exhibition. All eyes were at 
once drawn to them. Here was something totally 
new. Here was a completeness of reproduction, a 
fidelity to Nature, never before approached, never 
aimed at by modern sculptors. Even the most 
delicate bloodvessels, the finest wrinkles, were 
traceable in the clear marble. Nor did the effect 
of the whole seem to be thereby marred. People 
knew not whether their astonishment ought to pass 
into admiration or censure. The Italian sculptors 
gathered themselves up. This man's Art and 
theirs were irreconcilable. They felt, — we must 
crush him, or he will overmaster us. They crowded 
the next exhibition with their best busts. Powers, 
too, was there. In the Tuscan capital, a young 
American sculptor not merely contended publicly 
with a host of artists for superiority ; he defied to 
mortal combat the Italian school in this department 
of Art as taught by Canova. It was a conflict not 
for victory solely, but for life. Where would be 
the triumph, was not long doubtful. Powers' s busts 
grew more and more upon the public eye. The 
longer they were looked at, the stronger they grew. 
By the light they shed upon the art of sculpture, 
the deficiencies of their rivals became for the first 
time fully apparent. Connoisseurs discovered that 
they had hitherto been content with what was flat 
and lifeless. 



POWERS. 147 

The principle of the academic style of bust-mak- 
ing, thus suddenly supplanted, was, to merge the 
minor details into the larger traits, and to attempt 
to elevate — to idealize, was the phrase — the sub- 
ject by preserving only the general form and out- 
line. The result was, that busts were mostly faith- 
less and insipid, their insipidity being generally in 
proportion to their unfaithfulness. Powers made 
evident, that the finest traits contribute to the indi- 
viduality of character ; that the slightest diver- 
gence from the particularities of form vitiates the 
expression ; that the only good basis of a bust is 
the closest adherence to the material form, as well 
in detail as in gross. So much for the ground- 
work. Hand in hand with this physical fidelity 
must go, the vital fidelity ; that is, a power to seize 
life as it plays on that beautiful marvel, the human 
countenance. From the depth of the soul comes 
the expression on the countenance ; only from the 
depth of a soul flooded with sensibility can come 
the power to reproduce this tremulous mystical sur- 
face. Nay, this susceptibility is needed for the 
achievement of the physical fidelity itself. With- 
out it, the lines harden and stiffen under the most 
acute and precise perception. Finally, to this 
union of accuracy in copying the very mould and 
shape of the features, with sympathy for the various 
life that animates them, must be added the sense 
of the Beautiful. This is the decisive gift that 



148 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

turns the other rich faculties into endowments for 
Art. 

The Beautiful underlies the roughest as well as 
the fairest products of Nature. It is the seed of 
creation. In all living things this seed bears fruit. 
In the embryo of each there is a potentiality, so to 
speak, to be beautiful, not entirely fulfilled in the 
most perfect developments, not entirely defaced in 
the most deformed. This spirit of beauty, resplen- 
dent at times to the dullest senses, lambent or latent 
in all living forms, pervading creation, — this spirit 
is the vitality of the Artist. In it he has his being. 
His inward life is a perpetual yearning for the 
Beautiful ; his outward, an endeavor to grasp and 
embody its forms ; his happiness is, to minister in 
its service ; his ecstasy, the glimpses he is vouch- 
safed of its divine splendors. 

As sympathy with the motions of life is needed 
to copy physical forms, so this loving intimacy with 
the Beautiful is needed to refine and to guide this 
sympathy. In short, a lively sense of the Beau- 
tiful is requisite, not merely to produce out of the 
mind an ideal head, — an act so seldom really per- 
formed, — but likewise to reproduce a living head. 
He who would copy a countenance must know it. 
To know a human face, — what a multiplex pro- 
found knowledge ! Not enough is it to have a 
shrewd discriminating eye for forms ; not enough, 
to peer beneath the surface through the shifting 



POWERS. 149 

expression. To get knowledge of any individual 
thing, we must start with a general standard. You 
cannot judge of a man's height, unless you bring 
with you a generic idea of measures and a notion 
of manly stature. So of a man's mind, though 
the process be so much deeper ; and so, too, of his 
head and face. A preconceived idea of the human 
countenance in its fullest capability of form and 
expression, an aboriginal standard must illuminate 
the vision that aims to take in a complete image 
of any face. What mind can compass this deep- 
lying idea, except one made piercing, transpar- 
ent, " visionary," by an intense inborn love of 
beauty ? Each face is, so to speak, an offshoot 
from a type ; each is a partial incarnation of an 
ideal, all ideals springing of. course out of the 
domain of Beauty. It is only by being able to go 
back to this ideal, w T hich stands again closely linked 
with the one, final, primeval, perfect idea of the 
human countenance, — it is only by thus mastering, 
I may say, the original possibility of each face, 
that you can fully discern its characteristics, its 
essential difference from other faces — learn why 
it is as it is and not otherwise. A vivid, electric 
sensibility to the Beautiful, in active cooperation 
with the other powers, is the penetrative, magnify- 
ing telescope, wherewith alone the vision is carried 
into the primitive fields of being. Thus is every 
face, even the most misshapen, brought within 



150 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

the circle of the Beautiful, — cannot be fully seen, 
cannot be thoroughly known, until it is brought 
within that circle. Under the homeliest, com- 
monest countenance, there is an inner lamp of 
unrevealed beauty, casting up at times into the 
features gleams of its light. These translucent 
moments — its truest and best states — the Artist 
must seize, in order to effect a full likeness. This 
is the genuine idealization. And these states he 
cannot even perceive without the subtle expansive 
sense of the Beautiful. 

The unexampled excellence of Powers's busts 
was soon acknowledged. In this department of 
Art the Italian sculptors yielded to him the first 
place. Thorwaldsen, on coming, astonished, out 
of Powers's studio, declared that he could not 
make such busts ; that there were none superior to 
them, ancient or modern. The cry now rose, that 
Powers could make busts, he could copy nature, 
but nothing more. This false inference sprang not 
wholly from jealousy, but in part from the false 
school of Art long dominant in Italy, where stu- 
dents were taught to study the antique more than 
Nature ; whereby the perceptions and mental pow- 
ers became so weakened and sophisticated, that it 
was no longer felt, what a task, how high and in- 
tense it is, truly and vitally to copy Nature. Con- 
ceive what is a human countenance, — the most 
wonderful work of God that our eyes can come 



POWERS. 151 

close to ! What an harmonious blending of diverse 
forms, what a compact constellation of beaming 
features, what concentrated life, what power, what 
variety, what unfathomable significance, in that 
jewelled crown of the body, that transparent 
earthly temple of the soul ! Adequately to rep- 
resent this masterpiece of divine workmanship, 
what a deed ! He who can reproduce it in its full 
life and truth and character, must be a great 
Artist ; that is, a re-maker, in a degree, of God's 
works, — a poet, a creator. To copy Nature, for- 
sooth ; the words are very simple : the act is one 
of deep insight, of noble labor, anything but a 
superficial work. He who performs it well, co- 
works with Nature, his mind exalted the while by 
poetic fervor. Hence none but Artists of the first 
class have left the best portraits. 

The faculty for the Ideal is then indispensable to 
the execution of a good bust. It is the keystone 
which binds the other endowments into the beau- 
tiful arch, whereby works of human hands grow 
stronger with time. The basis in plastic Art is 
always, unerring accuracy in rendering physical 
forms. Sense of beauty and correctness of draw- 
ing are thus the two extremes of the Artist's 
means. Between them — and needed to link 
them in effective union — is fulness of sensibility, 
to sympathize with and seize the expression of all 
the passions and emotions of the soul. These, with 



152 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

imitative talent and manual dexterity, embrace the 
powers needed as well in the portrait-artist as in 
him whose subjects are inventions. I speak of the 
plastic Artist without distinguishing the sculptor 
from the painter. The difference between them is 
in the inequality of their endowment with the fac- 
ulties of form and color ; the sculptor requiring a 
severer eye for form than the painter, and dispens- 
ing with an eye for color. The moment the Artist 
begins, by the working of his imagination, to com- 
pose a subject, then comes into active play the 
Reason ; the faculty whereby, in every department 
of work, prosaic as well as poetic, the mind selects 
and adapts, — the faculty whereby the means with- 
in reach are picked and arranged for the com- 
pletest attainment of the end in view. This, it 
seems to me, is the only power needed in larger 
measure for the artist who composes groups than 
for him who would make the best portrait. 

It is the completeness of his endowment with all 
the requisites for sculpture that stamps Powers 
"with greatness. In the circle of his genial gifts 
there is no chasm. They are compactly knit to- 
gether. To his ends they all cooperate smoothly, 
through that marvellous instrument, the human 
hand. Such is the precision of his eye, that he 
who exacts of himself the most faithful conformity 
to Nature's measurements never needs the help of 
compasses to attain it. Such his sense of the 



POWERS. 153 

Beautiful, that he does justice to the most beauti- 
ful countenance, and has given a new grace even 
to draperies. Such his sympathy with life, that 
with equal ease he seizes the expressions of all 
kinds of physiognomies, so that you cannot say that 
he does men better than women, old better than 
young ; and hereby, in conjunction with his mimetic 
talent, he imparts such an elastic look to his marble 
flesh, that the spiritual essence, wherewith all 
Nature's living forms are vivified, may be imagined 
to stream from his finger-ends while he works. 
Such his manual dexterity, that in twenty hours he 
can turn out one of these great busts in its un- 
paralleled completeness. And as if nothing should 
be wanting which could serve in his calling, Nature 
has bestowed on him a talent, I may call it a 
genius, for Mechanics, which — had it not been 
overborne by superior faculties destined to lift him 
up into the highest field of human labor — would 
have gained for him a name and living as an inven- 
tive and practical machinist. It is now the pliant 
servant of nobler qualities ; helping him to model- 
ling tools, to facilities and securities for the eleva- 
tion or removal of clay models, and to other con- 
trivances in the economy of his studio. 

Powers had not been long established in Flor- 
ence ere he set about his first statue, the Eve. 
This work was planned before he came to Italy. 
Almost precisely as it stands now embodied in atti- 



154 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

tucle and character, lie described to rne in America 
the image he had there evolved in his mind. The 
figure is above the average height, undraped and 
nearly erect. The only support it has from with- 
out is a broken stem by the side of the left leg, 
representing the tree whence the fruit has just 
been plucked. On this leg is thrown the weight, 
the other being slightly bent at the knee. The 
head, inclined to the right, follows the eyes, which 
are fixed upon the apple, held in the right hand, 
raised to the level of the breast. The left arm 
hangs by the side, the left hand holding a twig of 
the tree with two apples and leaves attached. The 
hair, parted in the middle and thrown behind the 
ears, falls in a compact mass on the back. Round 
the outer edge of the circular plot of grass and 
flowers, which is the sole basis of the statue, coils 
the serpent, who rears his head within a few mches 
of the right leg, looking up towards the face of 
Eve. 

Here, without a fold of drapery to weaken or 
conceal any of Nature's lineaments, is the mature 
figure of a woman ; nearly erect, the posture most 
favorable to beauty and perfectness of proportion ; 
the body unconsciously arrested in this upright 
attitude by the mind's intentness ; while the deed 
over which she broods, without disturbing the com- 
plete bodily repose, gives occupation to each hand 
and arm, throwing thereby more life as well into 



POWERS. 155 

them as into the whole figure. Thus intent and 
tranquil, she stands within the coil of the serpent, 
whose smooth but fiery folds and crest depict ani- 
mal fierceness, and contrast deeply with the female 
humanity above him. Both for moral and physical 
effect the best moment is chosen, the awful pause 
between obedience and disobedience. Her fresh 
feet pressing the flowers of Eden, Eve, still in her 
innocent nakedness, is fascinated against her purer 
will, — the mother and type of mankind, within 
whose boston is ever waging the conflict between 
good and evil. What fulness combined with what 
simplicity in this conception, which bespeaks the 
richest resources of imagination under guidance 
of the severest purity of taste. 

How shall I describe the execution ? Knowl- 
edge and skill far exceeding mine would fall short 
of transmitting through words an image of this 
marvel of beauty. The most that the pen can do 
before a masterpiece of the pencil or chisel, is, to 
give a vivid impression of the effect it makes on 
the beholder, and a faint one of the masterpiece 
itself. 

In executing his Eve, Powers has had twenty 
or thirty models. From one he took an ankle, 
from another a shoulder, a fragment from the flank 
of a third, — and so on throughout, extracting his 
own preconceived image piece by piece out of 
Nature. From such a labor even a good Artist 



156 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

would recoil, baffled, disheartened. To none but 
a supreme genius does Nature accord such famil- 
iarity. With instantaneous discernment his eyes 
detect where she comes short, and where her sub- 
tle spirit of beauty has wrought itself out. He 
seizes each scrap of perfection, rejects all the rest, 
and so, out of a score of models, recompounds 
one of Nature's own originals. Such is the move- 
ment on the surface, that the statue has the look 
of having been wrought from within outward. 
With such truth is rendered the flexible 'expression 
imparted to flesh and blood by the vital workings, 
that the great internal processes might be inferred 
from such an exterior. The organs of animal life 
are at play within that elastic trunk ; there is 
smooth pulsation beneath that healthy rotundity 
of limb. The capacity and wonderful nature of 
the human form fill the mind as you gaze at this 
union of force, lightness, and buoyant grace. In 
spite of that smooth feminine roundness of mould, 
such visible power and springiness are in the frame 
and limbs, that, though now so still, the figure 
makes you think of Eve as bounding over shrub 
and rivulet, a dazzling picture of joyous beauty. 
Then, again, as the eye passes up to the counte- 
nance, with its dim expression of mingled thought 
and emotion, the current of feeling changes, and 
the human mind, with its wondrous endowments, 
absorbs for awhile the beholder. But mark ; it is 



POWERS. 157 

by the power of Beauty that he is wrought upon. 
Through this, humanity stands ennobled before 
him. By this, the human form and capability are 
dilated. This awakens delight, breeds suggestion. 
By means of this, the effect of the statue is full, 
various, its significance infinite. Take away its 
beauty, and all is a blank. The statue ceases 
to be. 

The head of Eve is a new head. As it is beau- 
tiful, it is Grecian ; but it recalls no Greek model. 
Nor Venus, nor Juno, nor Niobe, can claim that 
she helped to nurse it. Not back to any known 
form does it carry the mind ; it summons it to 
compass a new one. It is a fresh emanation from 
the deep bosom of Art. In form and expression, 
in feature and contour, in the blending of beauties 
into a radiant unity, it is a new Ideal, as pure as it 
is inexhaustible. Lightly it springs into its place 
from the bosom and shoulders. These flow into 
the trunk and arms, and these again into the lower 
limbs, with such graceful strength that the whole- 
ness of the work is the idea that establishes itself 
among the first upon the mind of the beholder. 
To the hollow of a foot, to the nail of a finger, 
every part is finished with the most laborious mi- 
nuteness. Yet, nowhere hardness. From her 
scattered stores of beauty Nature supplied the 
details ; with an infallible eye, the Artist culled 
them, and transferred them with a hand whose 



158 SCEXES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

firm precision was ever guided by grace. The 
Natural and the Ideal here blend into one act, 
their essences interfused for the unfolding of a full 
blossom of beauty. 

The clay model of Eve being finished, Powers's 
mind is busy with another work, also a single fe- 
male figure, which he will set about immediately. 
It will represent a modern Greek captive, exposed 
in the slave-market of Constantinople. Like Eve, 
the figure will be without drapery ; like her, it will 
not fail to be a model of female beauty, though in 
frame, size, age, character, and expression alto- 
gether different. 

Clevinger has been here but a short time, and 
is zealously at work upon the crowd of busts which 
he brought with him from America, and several 
that he has modelled in Florence. Among the 
former is a fine one of Alls ton ; among the latter, 
one of Louis Bonaparte, ex-king of Holland, so 
admirably executed that it awakens regret that 
there is none of equal fidelity extant of the Emper- 
or Napoleon. 



XIV. 

Petrarca — Macchiavelli — The Medici — Alfieri — 
Dante. 

T WILL conclude these Florentine chapters with 
■*■ a few chips of " fragments " picked up in that 
division, which the despotism of nerves over the 
intellectual as well as the physical man obliged me 
to put last in my scale of occupations and pas- 
times. 

Among my disappointments are Petrarca and 
Macchiavelli. I am disappointed in Petrarca, that 
his sonnets are written more out of the head than 
the heart. They sparkle with poetic fancy, but 
do not throb with sensibility. In his pleasant little 
autobiographical memoir, Petrarca ascribes to his 
love for Laura all that he was and did. For 
twenty years, it was the breath of mental life to 
him. Happily he was not of an energetic, glow- 
ing nature, (his portrait might be taken for that of 
a woman,) or his love would have consumed instead 
of animating him, or, worse still, would have had 
perhaps a quick close in success. I am sorry to 
conclude that he was very far from being the most 
miserable man of his generation. 



160 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Macchiavelli is not the searching thinker that 
one unacquainted with his works might infer him 
to be, from his so long-sustained reputation. He 
is a vigorous, accomplished writer ; a clear, ner- 
vous narrator. Subtlety in the discussion of points 
of political expediency seems to me his highest 
power. Princes, nobles, and populace are to him 
the ultimate elements of humanity. The deep 
relations of man to man, and of man to God, do 
not come vividly within his view. He has no thor- 
ough insight into the moral resources of man ; he 
does not transpierce the surface of human selfish- 
ness. There is in him no ray of divine illumina- 
tion whereby he might discern the absolute. But 
it is unjust to reproach him with a want which he 
has in common with most of his brother historians. 

A just reproach against him is, that in his His- 
tory he flattered the Medici, and has handed down 
a misrepresentation of them. From his pages no 
one would learn that the first Medici were usurpers, 
successful demagogues. Sismondi and Alfieri coun- 
teract the false report of Macchiavelli, and dis- 
close the long-concealed ugliness of these vulgar 
tyrants. Describing the state of Italy at the 
death of Lorenzo, and the loss of independence 
with that of liberty, Sismondi says : " Florence, 
mastered for three generations by the family of 
Medici, depraved by their licentiousness, made 
venal by their wealth, had learnt from them to 



MAC CHI A VELLL 161 

fear and to obey." The hollo wness and worth- 
lessness of Pope Leo X., his prodigality, disso- 
luteness, and incapacity, are exposed by Sismondi, 
who describes as follows Pope Clement VII., an- 
other Medici, and the one to whom Macchiavelli, 
in a fulsome address, dedicated his " History of 
Florence " : " Under the pontificate of Leo X., 
his cousin, when times were prosperous, he acquired 
the reputation of ability ; but when he came to 
confront distress not brought about by himself, 
then his unskilfulness in matters of finance and 
government, his sordid avarice, his pusillanimity 
and imprudence, his sudden resolutions and pro- 
longed indecision, rendered him no less odious than 
ridiculous." Sismondi relates that Lorenzo dei 
Medici, being on his death-bed, sent for Savonarola, 
the celebrated preacher of ecclesiastical reform 
and devotee to liberty, who had hitherto refused to 
see Lorenzo, or to show him any respect. Never- 
theless, Lorenzo, moved by the fame of Savona- 
rola's eloquence and sanctity, desired to receive 
absolution from him. Savonarola did not refuse to 
him consolations and exhortations, but declared, 
that absolve him from his sins he could not, unless 
he gave proof of penitence by repairing as much 
as in him lay his errors ; that he must pardon his 
enemies, make restitution of his ill-gotten wealth, 
and restore to his country its liberty. Lorenzo, 
not consenting, was denied absolution, and died, 



162 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

says Sismondi, in the possession of despotic power: 
" mori in possesso della tirannide." 

Lorenzo dei Medici, — whose portrait in the 
gallery here is that of an intellectual sensualist, 
whose largesses, pecuniary liberalities, and sensual 
suinptuosities won for him the equivocal title of 
il magnijico, — Lorenzo and Leo X. have the 
fame of being the munificent patrons of poets and 
artists. All the fame they deserve on this score 
is, that they had taste to appreciate the men of 
merit who lived in their day. These men were 
the last offspring of the antecedent energetic times 
of liberty. By the receding waves of freedom 
they had been left upon the barren shore of des- 
potism. What had Leo X. to do with the forming 
of the eminent writers and artists who adorned the 
age to which the servility of men has given his 
name ? Patrons of poets and artists ! A curse 
upon patronage. Let it be bestowed upon uphol- 
sterers and barbers. Poets and artists want no 
patronage : what they do want is sympathy. Pat- 
ronage is narrow, is blind ; its eyes are egotisti- 
cal ; it is prone to uphold mere talent, mediocrity. 
Sympathy is expansive, keen-sighted, and discerns 
and confirms genius. 

Leonardo da Vinci, Dante, Boccaccio, Petrarca, 
Michael Angelo, men too great to be patronized, 
were the children of republican Florence. By 
Democracy, turbulent Democracy, were they nursed 



ALFIERI. 163 

into heroic stature. When the basis of her gov- 
ernment was the sovereignty of the people, when 
nobles had to put away their nobility to be admitted 
to a share in the administration of affairs, then it 
was that the bosom of Florence was fertile and 
wide enough to give birth to the men who are the 
chief glory of modern Italy. Compare Florence 
as she then was, — vigorous, manly, erect, produc- 
tive, — with her abject, effeminate, barren state 
under the Medici. Or contrast the genius gener- 
ated by democratic Florence with that of oligarchic 
Venice. 

Alfieri tells, that he betook himself to writing 
because, in his miserable age and land, he had no 
scope for action ; and that he remained single 
because he would not be a breeder of slaves. He 
utters the despair, to passionate tears, which he 
felt, when young and deeply moved by the traits 
of greatness related by Plutarch, to find himself 
in times and in a country where no great thing 
could be either said or acted. The feelings here 
implied are the breath of his dramas. In them, a 
clear nervous understanding gives rapid utterance 
to wrath, pride, and impetuous passion. Though 
great within his sphere, his nature was not ample 
and complex enough for the highest tragedy. In 
his composition there was too much of passion and 
too little of high emotion. Fully to feel and per- 
ceive the awful and pathetic in human conjunctions, 



164 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

a deep fund of sentiment is needed. A condensed 
tale of passion is not of itself a Tragedy. To 
dark feelings, resolves, and deeds, emotion must 
give breadth, and depth, and relief. Passion fur- 
nishes crimes, but cannot furnish the kind and 
degree of horror which should accompany their 
commission. To give Tragedy the grand compass 
and sublime significance whereof it is susceptible, 
it is not enough that through the storm is visible 
the majestic figure of Justice : the blackest clouds 
must be fringed with the light of Hope and Pity, 
while through them Religion gives vistas into the 
Infinite, Beauty keeping watch to repel what is 
partial or deformed. In Alfieri, these great gifts 
are not commensurate with his power of intellect 
and passion. Hence, like the French classic dram- 
atists, he is obliged to bind his personages into 
too narrow a circle. They have not enough of 
moral liberty. They are not swayed merely, they 
are tyrannized over, by the passions. Hence, 
they want elasticity and color. They are like 
hard engravings. 

Alfieri does not cut deep into character : he 
gives a clean outline, but broad flat surfaces with- 
out finish of parts. It is this throbbing movement 
in details, which imparts buoyancy and expression. 
Wanting it, Alfieri is mostly hard. The effect of 
the whole is imposing, but does not invite or bear 
close inspection. Hence, though he is clear and 



ALF1ER1. — DANTE. 165 

rapid, and tells a story vividly, his tragedies are 
not life-like. In Alfieri there is vigorous rhetoric, 
sustained vivacity, fervent passion ; but no depth 
of sentiment, no play of a fleet rejoicing imagina- 
tion, nothing " visionary," and none of the " golden 
cadence of poetry." But his heart was full of 
nobleness. He was a proud, lofty man, severe, 
but truth-loving and scornful of littleness. He de- 
lighted to depict characters that are manly and 
energetic. He makes them wrathful against tyr- 
anny, hardy, urgent for freedom, reclaiming with 
burning words the lost rights of man, protesting 
fiercely against oppression. There is in Alfieri a 
stern virility that contrasts strongly with Italian 
effeminateness. An indignant frown sits ever on 
his brow, as if rebuking the passivity of his coun- 
trymen. His verse is swollen with wrath. It has 
the clangor of a trumpet, that would shame the soft 
piping of flutes. 

Above Alfieri, far above him and all other Italian 
greatness, solitary in the earliness of his rise, ere 
the modern mind had worked itself open, and still 
as solitary amidst the after-splendors of Italy's 
fruitfulness, is Dante. Take away any other great 
Poet or Artist, and in the broad shining rampart 
wherewith genius has beautified and fortified Italy, 
there would be a mournful chasm : take away 
Dante, and you level the Citadel itself, under whose 
shelter the whole compact cincture has grown into 
strength and beauty. 



166 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Three hundred years before Shakspeare, in 1265, 
was Dante born. His social position secured to 
him the best schooling. He was taught and eager- 
ly learnt all the crude knowledge of his clay. 
Through the precocious susceptibility of the poetic 
temperament, he was in love at the age of nine 
years. This love, as will be with such natures, was 
wrought into his heart, expanding his young being 
with beautiful visions and hopes, and making tune- 
ful the poetry within him. It endured with his 
life, and spiritualized his latest inspirations. Sober- 
ly he afterwards married another, and was the 
father of a numerous family. In the stirring days 
of Guelfs and Ghibellines, he became a public 
leader, made a campaign, was for a while one of 
the chief magistrates of Florence, her ambassador 
abroad more than once, and at the age of thirty-six 
closed his public career in the common Florentine 
way at that period, namely, by exile. Refusing to 
be recalled on condition of unmanly concessions, 
he never again saw his home. For twenty years 
he was an impoverished, wandering exile, and in 
his fifty-sixth year breathed his last at Ravenna. 

But Dante's life is his poem. Therein is the 
spirit of the mighty man incarnated. The life after 
earthly death is his theme. What a mould for the 
thoughts and sympathies of a poet, and what a poet, 
to fill all the chambers of such a mould ! Man's 
whole nature claims interpretation ; his powers, 



DANTE. 167 

•wants, vices, aspirations, basenesses, grandeurs. 
The imagination of semi-Christian Italy had strained 
itself to bring before the sensuous mind of the 
South an image of the future home of the soul. 
The supermundane thoughts, fears, hopes of his 
time, Dante condensed into one vast picture — a 
picture cut as upon adamant with diamond. To 
enrich Hell, and Purgatory, and Paradise, he 
coined his own soul. His very body became trans- 
figured, purged of its flesh, by the intensity of fiery 
thought. Gaunt, pale, stern, rapt, his " visionary " 
eyes glaring under his deep furrowed brow, as he 
■walked the streets of Verona, he heard people 
whisper, " That is he who has been down into 
Hell." Down into the depths of his fervent nature 
he had been, and kept himself lean by brooding 
over his passions, emotions, hopes, and transmuting 
the essence of them into everlasting song. 

Conceive the statuesque grand imagination of 
Michael Angelo united to the vivid homely partic- 
ularity of Defoe, making pictures out of materials 
drawn from a heart whose rapturous sympathies 
ranged with Orphean power through the whole 
gamut of human feeling, from the blackest hate up 
to the brightest love, and you will understand what 
is meant by the term Dantesque. In the epitaph 
for himself, written by Dante and inscribed on his 
tomb at Ravenna, he says : "I have sung, while 
traversing them, the abode of God, Phlegethon and 



168 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

the foul pits." Traversing must be taken literally. 
Dante almost believed that he had traversed them ; 
and so does his reader too, such is the control the 
Poet gains over the reader through his burning 
intensity and graphic picturesqueness. Like the 
mark of the fierce jagged lightning upon the black 
night-cloud are some of his touches, as awful, as 
fearfully distinct, but not as momentary. 

In the face of the contrary judgment of such 
high critics as Shelley and Carlyle, I concur in 
the common opinion, which gives preference to 
the Inferno over the Purgatorio and Paradiso. 
Dante's rich nature included the highest and lowest 
in humanity. With the pure, the calm, the tender, 
the ethereal, his sympathy was as lively as with 
the turbulent, the passionate, the gross. But the 
hot contentions of the time, and especially their 
effect upon himself, — through them an outcast and 
proud mendicant, — forced the latter upon his 
heart as its unavoidable familiars. All about and 
within him were plots, ambitions, wraths, chagrins, 
jealousies, miseries. The times and his own dis- 
tresses darkened his mood to the lurid hue of Hell. 
Moreover, the happiness of Heaven, the rewards 
of the spirit, its empyreal joys, can be but faintly 
pictured by visual corporeal images, the only ones 
the earthly poet possesses. The thwarted imagina- 
tion loses itself in a vague, dazzling, golden mist. 
On the contrary, the trials and agonies of the spirit 



DANTE. 169 

in Purgatory and Hell are by such images suit- 
ably, forcibly, definitely set forth. The sufferings 
of the wicked while in the flesh are thereby typi- 
fied. And this suggests to me, that one, bent, as 
many are, upon detecting Allegory in Dante, might 
regard the whole poem as one grand Allegory, 
wherein, under the guise of a picture of the future 
world, the poet has represented the effect of the 
feelings in this ; the pangs, for example, of the 
murderer and glutton in Hell, being but a portrait- 
ure, poetically colored, of the actual torments on 
earth of those who commit murder and gluttony. 
Finally, in this there is evidence — and is it not 
conclusive ? — of the superiority of the Book of 
Hell, that in that Book occur the two most cele- 
brated passages in the poem, — passages in which, 
with unsurpassed felicity of diction and versifica- 
tion, the pathetic and terrible are rounded by the 
spirit of Poetry into pictures, where simplicity, 
expression, beauty, combine to produce effects un- 
rivalled in this kind in the pages of Literature. I 
refer of course to the stories of Francesca and 
Ugolino. 

Dante's work is untranslatable. Not merely 
because the style, form, and rhythm of every great 
Poem, being the incarnation of inspired thought, 
you cannot but lacerate the thought in disembody- 
ing it ; but because, moreover, much of the ele- 
ments of its body, the words namely in which the 
spirit made itself visible, have passed away. To 



170 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

get a faithful English transcript of the great Floren* 
tine, we should need a diction of the fourteenth cen- 
tury, moulded by a more fiery and potent genius 
than Chaucer. Not the thoughts solely, as in 
every true poem, are so often virgin thoughts ; the 
words, too, many of them, are virgin words. Their 
freshness and unworn vigor are there alone in 
Dante's Italian. Of the modern intellectual move- 
ment, Dante was the majestic Herald. In his 
poem are the mysterious shadows, the glow, the fra- 
grance, the young life-promising splendors of the 
dawn. The broad day has its strength and its 
blessings ; but it can give only a faint image of 
the glories of its birth. 

The bitter woes of Dante, hard and bitter to the 
shortening of his life, cannot but give a pang to 
the reader whom his genius has exalted and de- 
lighted. He was a life-long sufferer. Early dis- 
appointed in love ; not blest, it would seem, in his 
marriage ; foiled as a statesman ; misjudged and 
relentlessly proscribed by the Florentines, upon 
whom from the pits of Hell his wrath wreaked 
itself in a damning line, calling them, Crente 
avara, invida, e superba ; a homeless wanderer; 
a dependent at courts where, though honored, he 
could not be valued ; obliged to consort there with 
buffoons and parasites, he whose great heart was 
full of honor, and nobleness, and tenderness ; and 
at last all his political plans and hopes baffled, 
closing his mournful days far, far away from home 



DANTE. 171 

and kin, wasted, sorrow-stricken, broken-hearted. 
Most sharp, most cruel, were his woes. Yet to 
them perhaps we owe his poem. Had he not been 
discomfited and exiled, who can saj that the mood 
or the leisure would have been found for such 
poetry ? His vicissitudes and woes were the soil 
to feed and ripen his conceptions. They steeped 
him in dark experiences, intensified his passions, 
enriching the imagination that was tasked to people 
Hell and Purgatory ; while from his own pains he 
turned with keener joy and lightened pen to the 
beatitudes of Heaven. But for his sorrows, in his 
soul would not have been kindled so fierce a fire. 
Out of the seething gloom of his sublime heart 
shot forth forked lightnings which still glow, a 
perennial illumination, — to the eyes of men, a 
beauty, a marvel, a terror. Poor indeed he was 
in purse ; but what wealth had he not in his brain ! 
True, he was a father parted from his children, a 
proud warm man, eating the bread of cold stran- 
gers ; but had he not his genius and its bounding 
offspring for company, and would not a day of such 
heavenly labor as his outweigh a month, ay, a 
year of crushed pride ? What though by the 
world he was misused, received from it little, his 
own even wrested from him ; was he not the giver, 
the conscious giver, to the world of riches fineless ? 
Not six men, since men were, have been blest with 
such a power of giving. 



XV. 

Back to Switzerland and the Rhine fok the Summer 
— Pass of the St. Gothard. 

OTARTING northward from Florence, in the 
^ afternoon of June 7th, 1842, in less than an 
hour we were among the Apennines, over whose 
barren, billowy surface we rolled on a good road 
to within a few miles of Bologna, where we arrived 
the next day at three. 

The Italian intellect is quick at expedients. 
With freedom, the Italians would be eminently 
practical. Free people are always practical ; 
hence, the superiority of the English and Ameri- 
cans in the useful and commodious. From neces- 
sity and self-defence, the acute Italians are adepts 
in the art of deception. Hypocrisy they are 
taught by their masters, temporal and spiritual ; 
a substitution of the semblance for the substance 
being the foundation of civil and religious rule in 
Italy. 

The fictions of the Catholic Church are mostly 
unsuitable to the Arts ; nor can martyrs and ema- 
ciated anchorites be subjected to the laws of 
beauty. The Greek divinities were incarnations 



MILAN. 173 

of powers, qualities, truths, which, though not the 
deepest, were shaped by beauty. The Romish 
saints, with their miracles and macerations, want 
capability of beauty together with dignity and 
respectability, and are thence doubly unfit for the 
handling of Art. The highest genius cannot make 
them thoroughly effective. In the gallery of 
Bologna one is often repelled even from the best 
execution by the offensiveness of the subject. The 
geniality of Art is shown as much in the selection 
of subjects as in the treatment. One tires of 
heavy virgins that would be thought to float, and 
old men on their knees to them, trying to look 
extasies ; and more still, of the distortions of men- 
tal and bodily agony. 

Leaving Bologna at noon, by Modena and Reg- 
gio, we arrived at Parma after dusk, through a 
country, level, fertile, and well tilled. Along the 
road vines hung in graceful festoons from tree to 
tree, and peasants were gathering mulberry leaves 
for silk-worms. 

After running to the Gallery, just to have a 
momentary look at the two famous Correggios, we 
started from Parma at nine in the morning, and 
coming on rapidly through Piacenza and Lodi, 
entered Milan just before dark. 

By the grandeur of the Cathedral we were even 
more moved than when we first beheld it. Then 
we explored its populous roof; now we descended 



174 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

into its vaults, peopled, too, with statues and busts, 
some of silver to the value of more than a mil- 
lion of francs. About the tomb of St. Charles 
Borromeo there is gold and silver to the amount 
of four million francs. Guard it well, priests. It 
will be a treasure on that day, which will come, 
when this people's deep, smothered cry shall end 
at last in a triumphant shout. From the Cathedral 
we betook ourselves to the barn-like place, which 
contains Leonardo da Vinci's fresco of the Last 
Supper. Here is the inspiration of genius. To 
produce that head of Jesus, what a conception 
must have been long nursed in the great painter's 
brain, and with what intense force of will must he 
have embodied it, to stamp upon human features 
such preeminence, such benignity, such majesty! 
With this, the vigor and variety in the superb 
heads of the Apostles, the grace and spirit of the 
grouping, bring the scene before you with such 
speaking presence, that one sees how pictures can 
strengthen and keep alive religious belief. By its 
vivid reality, its beauty and character, this sublime 
picture proclaims the truth of what it sets forth, 
and takes the mind captive with its power and its 
fascination. 

As we approached Como, we enjoyed much the 
contact again with mountains. After an early 
breakfast, June 12th, we were on board the steam- 
boat at seven, to explore the beautiful lake. At 



THE LAKE OF COMO. 175 

nine, about midway, we landed, in order to see and 
have the views from the villas Serbelloni, Melzi, 
and Somariva. 

The villa Somariva has some fine sculpture by 
Thorwaldsen and Canova, and a number of Italian 
and French pictures. The French Ideal is a 
medium of the human form taken from measure- 
ment of the antique. The genuine Ideal is attain- 
able only through an earnest loving study of 
nature, directed by a sure eye and a warm sense 
of the beautiful. Modern French Art has an 
eccentric look ; whereas, Art should always be 
concentric, seeking, that is, the centre of all forms 
and expressions, the concentration into an individ- 
ual of the best qualities of many. Hence, high 
Art looks always tranquil and modest. French 
Art is apt to have an excited, conceited air.* 

Stopping as we did where the Lake branches, 
we had followed the advice of a Milanese gentle- 
man, who accosted us in the boat. Had we gone 
on, we should not have made by a good deal so 
much of our morning ; for the upper end of the 
lake has less interest and beauty than the middle. 
On reembarking, as the boat returned, between 
one and two, we renewed conversation with the 
friendly giver of such good counsel. He had 
spent his Sunday in a passive enjoyment of the 

* Since 1842, allegiance has been cordially sworn to Nature by 
French Art, and the result has been a renewal of power. — [1863.J 



176 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

rich soft beauties of the Lake. This was the easy 
and highest form of worship for a nature like his. 
He was a man past forty, of rather more than 
middle stature, with a well-made, somewhat stout 
frame, inclined to fulness. His complexion was 
of that rich creamy tint, seen oftener in Italy than 
elsewhere, with blue-black hair and smooth whis- 
kers ; a handsome man, with regular, bold features, 
that looked not bold, from the gentleness of his 
expression ; for his graceful mouth and large white 
teeth were formed for smiling, and his black eyes 
were not those glowing Italian orbs, in whose 
depths so much of good or evil lies sleeping, — 
you know not which, — they were shallow, hand- 
some, happy eyes. He ordered coffee, and pressed 
me to take a cup. After this he offered me a 
cigar from his case, and upon my declining that 
too, he seemed to conclude that I lived a very 
poor life. For himself, he let not an hour in the 
day go by, he said, without regaling his body with 
some or other fragrant stimulant. He urged us, 
should we revisit Milan, to stop at the hotel where 
he lodged, whose cuisine and wines he praised with 
thankful animation. Yet, he was not one of those 
who spend their mornings in expectation of their 
dinner. He was too subtle an epicurean for such 
a dead diurnal vacuity. Though his dinner was 
the chief circumstance of his being, still, after his 
mode, he valued time, and knew how to bridge 



THE ST. GOTHARD PASS. 177 

over the wide gulfs between meals upon pillars 
constructed of minor enjoyments, including among 
them easy acts of kindness and courtesy. 

We got back to Como at four, and started imme- 
diately for Lugano, our resting-place that night. 
The Lake of Lugano pleased us even more than 
that of Como. There is greater variety in the 
forms of the mountains. These fairy lakes, uniting 
Italy to Switzerland, combine the beauties of both. 

As you advance from Lugano, the mountains 
close in upon you, the scenery growing bolder and 
grander. Through an opening not far from Lu- 
gano, we had a clear distant view down into Lake 
Maggiore, and then we came upon the picturesque 
old town of Belinzona, flanked with turrets, the 
turrets flanked with mountains. Towards evening 
we approached the southern sublimity of this pass, 
a rent in the mountain nearly a mile long, where 
the river Ticino — which till now had this deep 
gorge all to himself — has been forced by the 
engineer to make room for a road, the angry, 
headlong torrent being thrice crossed and recrossed 
in the course of the mile. As we emerged from 
this magnificent passage, the mountains stretched 
up into Swiss stature, their sides clothed with firs 
as with a plumage. It was dark when we drove 
into Airolo, at the foot of the St. Gothard, where 
good beds awaited us. 

First through green fields and firs, then rugged 



178 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

wastes, and, finally, torrents, snow, and bare rock, 
up, up, up we went for three or four hours, the 
steep road making its way zigzag on terraces. 
The summit of the pass, a scene of cold dreary 
sterility, is a great geographical centre ; for within 
a circuit of ten miles are the sources of four of 
the chief rivers of Europe, the Rhine, the Rhone, 
the Reuss, and the Ticino. 

Now we set off in a race with the Reuss, who 
bounds five thousand feet down the mountain in a 
series of cataracts, to rush into the Lake of the 
Four Cantons at Fluellen. We crossed the Devil's 
Bridge, the northern sublimity of the St. Gothard 
Pass ; and the Pfaffemprung y so called from the 
tradition of a monk having leapt from rock to rock, 
across the torrent, with a maiden in his arms. 
That is a fine tradition. One cannot but have a 
kind of respect for the bold amorous monk. He 
deserved the maiden — better than any other 
monk. The beautiful maiden — for beautiful she 
could not but be, to inspire a feat so daring — 
must have been still and passive in the arms of her 
monastic Hercules ; for had she made herself 
heavy by scratching and kicking, whilst in mid- 
air over that fearful chasm, I fancy the tradition 
would have been more tragical. We passed 
through Altdorf, Tell's Altdorf, and taking the 
steamboat at Fluellen, traversed under a serene 
sky the Lake of the Four Cantons, with its sub- 



SWISS SCENERY. 179 

lime scenery, landing in Lucerne after sundown. 
Thus, from dawn to twilight we had crossed one 
of the grand Alpine passes, and the whole length 
of the most magnificent lake in Europe. This 
was a rich day. 

The next morning, before starting for Thun, we 
took time to walk a few steps beyond one of the 
gates to see the colossal lion, cut in the side of a 
rock, as designed by Thorwaldsen, in commemora- 
tion of the faithful Swiss who fell defending the 
royal family of France in the Tuileries in 1792. 
By the Emmendale we reached Thun the following 
day. Here, in this beautiful portal to the sub- 
lime scenery of the Bernese Alps, we sat ourselves 
down, in quiet lodgings, by the water's edge, near 
where the river issues from the lake. 

In the grandeurs, sublimities, movements of 
Nature in Switzerland, the creative energy reveals 
itself in doings and voices that astound the imagi- 
nation. Nature seems here more than elsewhere 
vivified by the breath of God. Those gigantic 
piles of riven rock, fixed in sublime ruggedness, 
proclaim with unwonted emphasis the awful hand 
that arrested their upheaving. Those terrific fields 
of eternal ice, the nourishing mothers of great 
rivers, tempt the imagination towards the myste- 
rious source of Nature's processes. The common 
forms and elements of our globe are here exag- 
gerated. Hills and valleys become mountains and 



180 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

gorges ; winter dwells on the peaks throughout 
summer ; streams are obliged to be torrents. 
Walking in a meadow, you come suddenly on a 
streamlet that looks in the grass like a transparent 
serpent at full speed ; it runs with such startling 
velocity as though it had a momentous mysterious 
mission. The rivers rush out of the lakes as if 
they had twice the work to do of other rivers. 

At the end of a month, we quitted Thun, about 
the middle of July, to return, for the rest of the 
summer, to the water-cure establishment at Bop- 
part. It would have been wiser had we gone to 
Graeffenberg. Priessnitz understands his own dis- 
covery better than any one else, and inspires his 
own patients with a deeper confidence. At Graef- 
fenberg, moreover, there is mountain air and the 
coldest water. Through the secluded Minister 
valley we reached Basle, whence by railroad, post, 
and steamboat we rapidly descended the Rhine to 
Boppart. The Rhine suffers at first by being seen 
when one's vision has just been enlarged and sub- 
limated by Switzerland. 



XVI. 

Return to Italy — Munich — Innspruck —Verona— Venice 
— Ferrara — Florence — Pisa. 

HPHE left, the wooded, shore of the Rhine was 
-*- golden with autumnal foliage, the right pale 
with fading vineyards, when in the middle of Octo- 
ber we again turned our faces southward. It was 
eleven o'clock, a chilly moonlight night, when, at 
the gate of Frankfort, the officer questioned us, 
"Are you the Duke ? " — " No, I am an Ameri- 
can." — " Oh, then," to the postilion, "drive on." 

Our former admiration of Dannecker's statue of 
Ariadne was somewhat qualified, for since we first 
saw it our eyes had been strengthened in Italy. 
The composition is admirable, the attitude grace- 
ful, but the limbs want rounding and expressive 
finish ; and the head is stiff, as mimicry of the 
antique always is. 

It being too late to reenter Italy by the Spliigen 
pass, we bent our course more eastward towards 
Munich and the Tyrol, through the fine old Ger- 
man towns of Wiirzburg and Augsburg. We 
might have been present at the festival held to cel- 
ebrate the completion of the Wdlhalla, a magnifi- 



182 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

cent temple on the shore of the Danube, erected 
by the King of Bavaria, in honor of German worth 
and genius, to be adorned with the statues and 
busts of Germany's great men, from Arminius to 
Schiller. When I learnt afterwards that from this 
temple Luther is to be excluded, I was glad that 
we had not gone out of our way to see it. Figure 
to yourself the Apollo of the Vatican with the 
head purposely taken off, or the Cathedral of Stras- 
burg with the spire demolished, and you will have 
some notion of the grossness of this outrage. A 
German Pantheon without Luther ! The grandest 
national temple that architecture could devise, 
and sculpture adorn with the effigies of German 
greatness, yet left bare of that of Luther, could 
never be but a fragment. The impertinence of 
this petty, transitory King, to try to put an affront 
on the mighty, undying Sovereign, Luther ! 

In Munich there is a noble collection of pic- 
tures ; but the city, with its fresh new palaces, and 
churches, and theatres, has a made-up look. It 
seems the work of Dilettantism : it is not a warm 
growth out of the wants and aspirations of the 
time. It is as if it had been said : architecture 
and painting are fine things ; therefore we will 
have them. The King of Bavaria, the builder 
. and collector of all this, has been a great " Patron" 
of the Arts. Latterly his patronage is said to 
have taken another direction, and he has become 



THE TYROL.— VERONA. 183 

a patron of Religion. The one is as proper a sub- 
ject for patronage as the other. 

We entered the Tyrol on the 22d of October,, 
after a light fall of snow, which weighed just 
enough on the fir-trees to add a grace to their 
shapes, and on their dark green foliage sparkled 
in the sun, like a transparent silver canopy. Tyr- 
olese scenery we saw in its most picturesque 
aspect. Our road went through Innspruck, the 
capital of the Tyrol, lying in a capacious valley 
encompassed by mountains ; thence over the Bre- 
mer through Botzen, historical Trent, and Ro- 
ver edo. Coming down from the chilly mountains, 
the sun of Italy was luxurious. What a fascina- 
tion there is in this warm, beautiful land ! 

We stopped half a day at Verona. Dante and 
Shakspeare have both been here ; Dante in per- 
son, as guest of the Scaligers, Shakspeare in 
Juliet, that resplendent diamond exhibited by the 
lightning of a tropical night-storm. Just out of 
the town they show a huge, rough, open stone cof- 
fer, as Juliet's tomb ; and in one of the principal 
streets our cicerone pointed to a house which he 
said was that of the Capulets. Preferring to 
believe, we made no further inquiries. So, we 
have seen Juliet's tomb and the house of the Cap- 
ulets. We saw, too, the palace of the Scaligers, 
wherein, at the table of Can-grande, Dante hurled 
at his host that celebrated sarcasm. One can 



184 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

readily figure the sublime, thoughtful, sorrowful 
man, sitting silent as was his wont, scornful of the 
levities and follies of speech around him, and not 
keeping his scorn out of his great countenance, 
when, after some coarse sally from a favorite buf- 
foon, the prince, turning to the poet, said, " I won- 
der that this man, who is a fool, can make himself 
so agreeable to us all, while you, who are called 
wise, have not been able to do so." — " You would 
not wonder," answered Dante, " if you knew that 
friendship comes of similarity of habits and sym- 
pathy of souls." 

At Verona we turned from our southward 
course, and went off due east to Venice, without 
halting in Vicensa and Padua, that lay in our path. 
"We rowed in gondolas, saw Titian's picture of the 
Assumption, walked over the Rialto, inspected the 
Arsenal, stood near the Bridge of Sighs, took 
chocolate in the place of St. Mark, and rowed 
back in the Lagune to Mestre, whence by Padua 
and Rovigo we came to Ferrara. From the people 
a traveller has to do with on the highways of Eu- 
rope he gets much of the caricature of what in 
the world is called politeness, namely, a smooth lie 
varnished. 

A scarcity of post-horses detained us a day in 
Ferrara, and the bridge over the Po having been 
swept away by late floods, we had to make a cir- 
cuit to reach Bologna. The Manuscripts of Tasso 



THE GREEK SLAVE OF POWERS. 185 

and Ariosto in the Library, Ariosto's house and 
Tasso's prison, beguiled the time in the desolate 
old town of Ferrara. 

Off the beaten highways, from which the floods 
forced us, the people looked fresh and innocent. 
Wherever strangers throng, there knavery thrives. 
Hence, on the great routes of Europe, the trav- 
eller is constantly vexed and soured by imposi- 
tions, from the most brazen to the most subtle. 
From the obsequious innkeeper to the coarse pos- 
tilion, he is the victim of the whole class with 
w r hom he has to deal. Yet he would be very un- 
just who should thence infer that cheating and 
lying are habitual with the people among whom by 
these classes he is so often plagued and wronged. 
The country between Ferrara and Bologna over- 
flows with population. Under this warm sun, the 
fertile valley of the Po yields meat, drink, and 
clothing all at once ; silk, vine, and grain growing 
in plenteous crops at the same time in one field. 

At Florence we found Powers with his model of 
the Greek Slave nearly finished. What easy 
power there is in genius ! Here is one of the 
most difficult tasks of sculpture — a nude female 
figure — conceived and executed with a perfect- 
ness that completely conceals all the labor of 
thought and hand bestowed upon it. Most worthy 
to be a daughter of the Eve, this figure is alto- 
gether of another type, slender and maidenly. 



186 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Like Eve, it is a revelation of the symmetry, the 
inexhaustible grace, the infinite power and beauty 
of the human form. What an attitude, — how 
naturally brought about, — what a wonderful man- 
agement of the resources of such limbs for expres- 
sion ! It is a figure 

To radiate beauty everlastingly. 

From it one learns what a marvellous work is the 
human body. One feels himself elevated and 
purified while contemplating a creation so touch- 
ing and beautiful. Of this statue a distinguished 
American clergyman, whom we had the pleasure 
to meet in Italy, said, that were a hundred liber- 
tines to collect round it, attracted by its nudity, 
they would stand abashed and rebuked in its pres- 
ence. 

Greenough was absent in America, and his studio 
was closed. Clevinger was at work at the model 
of his Indian, his first ideal effort.* 

Pisa, famous for its leaning tower and its Uni- 
versity, which has able professors, is, for one who 
wants quiet, a pleasant place to spend three months 
of winter. The Arno, flowing through it from east 
to west for nearly a mile in a gentle curve, cuts 

* The last time I saw Clevinger he was standing before this 
work, with his frank, manly countenance animated by the pleas- 
ure and intentness of the labor. In the budding of his fame he 
was cut off, a loss to his family, his friends, his country. 



LEGHORN. 187 

the town into two parts, united by three bridges. 
Our front-windows look out upon the river and its 
western bridge, and from one in the rear there is 
a view of the long jagged outline of the distant 
Apeninnes running towards Genoa, the highest 
peaks covered with snow. Our walks along the 
Lung-Arno carry us daily by the palace of Byron, 
the memory of whom does not seem to be much 
cherished by the Italians here. 

On the 22d of February we found ourselves in 
lively, dirty, commercial Leghorn, which vulgar 
cacophonous dissyllable is intended to be a render- 
ing into English of the melodious Italian name of 
this town, which is Livorno. That the Mediterra- 
nean well deserves its reputation of being a very 
ugly sea in winter we had a sickening proof. In a 
stout French steamboat we were two nights and a 
day, instead of one night, in getting from Leghorn 
to Civita Vecchia. 



XVII. 

Rome. 

Friday, Febmary M£h, 1843. 

TTTE cast anchor in the small harbor of Civita 
" ' Vecchia at seven, landed at eight, and at 
ten set off for Rome. For several miles the road 
ran along the sea-shore, through a desolate but 
not barren country, with scarce a sign of popula- 
tion. A few massive fragments of a bridge from 
the hands of the Romans gave a sudden interest 
to the deserted region, and- kept our minds awake 
until three o'clock, when, still eleven miles distant 
from Rome, we came in sight of St. Peter's, 
which drew us towards it with such force that we 
wondered at the languor of the postilion, who 
drove his dull hacks as if at the end of our jour- 
ney there were nothing but a supper and a snug 
hostelry. We soon lost sight of St. Peter's. The 
fields — and this is not strictly part of the Cam- 
pagna — still looked dreary and abandoned. Up 
to the very walls of the ancient mistress of the 
world, and the present spiritual mistress of many 
millions more than the Caesars ever swayed, the 
land seems as if it had long lain under a maledic- 



ROME. 189 

tion. At last, towards sundown, after an ascent, 
whence we overlooked the " Eternal City/' the 
cupola of St. Peter's filled our eyes of a sudden, 
and seemingly within a stone's throw of us. De- 
scending again, we entered Rome by a gate near 
the church, and, escorted by a horseman whose 
casque led one to imagine him a mimic knight of 
Pharsalia, we drove close by the gigantic colon- 
nade that encloses the court of St. Peter's, crossed 
the Tiber by the Bridge of Adrian, and, after sev- 
eral turns through narrow streets, drove up to the 
temple of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, with its 
front of fluted marble columns, under which we 
passed into the interior and there halted. It was 
the Custom House, whence a dollar having quickly 
obtained for us release from the delay and vexa- 
tion of search, we drove at dusk through the Corso 
to the Hotel de V Europe in the Piazza di Spagna. 
Here we spent the evening in planning, and in try- 
ing to think ourselves into a full consciousness that 
we were in Rome. 

Saturday, Feb. 25th. — Before breakfast I took 
my first walk in Rome up the broad stairway from 
the Piazza di Spagna to the Pincian Hill ; but 
the atmosphere was hazy. Later, I walked down 
the Corso, whose palaces look wealth and luxury 
A palace without political power, what is it but a 
gilded prison, where refined sensuality strives to 
beguile the intellect in its servitude ! A scarlet 



190 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

gilt coach rolled by, with gorgeous trappings and 
three footmen in flaunting liveries crowded together 
on the foot-board behind, — an exhibition which 
shows manhood disgustingly bemasked, and is an 
unchristian ostentation of the mastery of man over 
man. It was the coach of a cardinal ! of one who 
assumes to be the preelect interpreter of the in- 
visible God ! of one whom millions believe to be 
among the most divinely enlightened expositors of 
the self-denying Jesus's words ! Truly, God rights 
the wrong in our little world by general laws, and 
stoops not to an individual ; else, it were neither 
rash nor profane to expect that the sleek horses 
of this silken-robed priest and pampered worldling 
might refuse to carry him to the altar raised to 
Him who declared it to be hard for a rich man to 
enter into the kingdom of heaven. Possibly he is 
self-deluded ; for so great is the power of man 
upon man, that the world-wide and time-heaped 
belief in his sanctity may have persuaded even 
himself that between his life and his doctrine there 
is no wide-gaping inconsistency. Some, too, being 
stronger in religious sentiment than in intellect, are 
blinded, under the bandage of custom, to the mon- 
strous imposture. But many a one, having capa- 
city for and opportunities of culture, must be a 
conscious worshipper in the temple of ambition and 
the knowing defiler of the Holy, and his life there- 
fore — what I leave each reader to name for him- 
self. 



ROME. 191 

This is a gala-da y in Rome, being one of the 
last of the Carnival. Driving to the Corso at two, 
we fell into a double file of carriages mo vino; in 
opposite directions. The Corso is the principal 
street of modern Rome, about a mile long, proud 
with palaces, columns, and open squares. Out 
of most of the numerous windows streamed long 
crimson silk hangings. At short intervals were 
dragoons as a mounted police. The street was 
thronged with people, many in masks and fantastic 
costumes ; the windows were crowded with gayly 
dressed spectators. But the chief source of anima- 
tion to the gay scene is the throwing of bonbons 
and bouquets from carriage to carriage, or in or 
out of the windows, or from or at the pedestrians, 
— a general interchange, in short, of missile greet- 
ings. Most of the bonbons are of clay, or paste 
and flowers, and hence can be dealt out profusely 
without much cost. You assail whom you please, 
and wire masks are worn by those who are careful 
of their eyes. It is an occasion when the adult 
lay aside their maturity and put on childhood again, 
and, as among children, there is the fullest free- 
dom and equality. We knew not a soul in the 
throng, and dealt our handfuls of powdered pills 
into carriages and windows, and received them in 
turn, with as much glee as if we had been harle- 
quins in a pantomime. We came in towards six. 
Sunday, Feb. 26th. — First to the Forum. 



192 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Here then had been the centre of the Roman 
world ! There before you is a door of the ancient 
Capitol ! A few straggling columns and arches 
stand up still manfully against time. You think it 
is something to find yourself face to face with what 
has heard the voice of Cicero and the Gracchi, — 
to shake hands, as it were, across a gulf of twenty 
centuries, with the contemporaries of the Scipios, — 
when you learn that all that you behold are relics 
of the Imperial epoch. They showed us, too, the 
walls and two columns of a temple of Romulus, 
with a door of well-wrought bronze. Although one 
likes to believe, we had to turn incredulous from 
these, and settled our minds again into positive 
faith before the arch of Titus, which stands at the 
end of the Forum opposite the Capitol, and is en- 
riched with sculpture illustrating the destruction 
of Jerusalem, in commemoration of which it was 
erected to the Emperor Titus. Passing under this, 
which Jews to this day will not do, we drove down 
the Via Sacra to the Colosseum, near which is the 
arch of Constantine. Conceive of an elliptical 
theatre with stone seats all round rising row back 
of row, to hold one hundred thousand spectators, 
who came in and out without delay or confusion 
through seventy inlets. Here in this vast arena 
may be said to have been represented the conflict 
between paganism and Christianity. Here were 
slaughtered tens of thousands of Christians, thrown 



ROME. 193 

to wild beasts as the most grateful spectacle to the 
Roman populace. The arena itself is now a Chris- 
tian temple, sanctified by the blood of the faith- 
sustained victims. 

From the Colosseum we went to the Church of 
St. John of the Lateran, where are preserved the 
heads of St. Peter and St. Paul. We were shown, 
too, the table on which Jesus took the last supper 
with the apostles. This with other relics is declared 
to have been brought from Jerusalem by Helen, the 
mother of Constantine. St. John of the Lateran 
is the oldest church in Europe, and is called the 
mother of all others. 

In the afternoon we drove to St. Peter's. The 
vestibule alone has the dimensions of a large 
church. Before passing the gigantic portal, I was 
filled with wonder. The first view within — what 
an emotion ! What a majestic work of human 
hands ! It is a symbol of the power of man. All 
its magnificent details are swallowed in its immen- 
sity. The one all-absorbing idea is vastness. 

Monday , Feb. 21th. — Our first visit to-day was 
to Crawford's studio. His Orpheus is here reputed 
a statue of high merit. The conception is at once 
simple and rich. The attitude is well adapted to 
display life and grace, the long line from the hind- 
most foot to the end of the curved arm being one 
of the finest sweeps the human body can present. 
The act of protecting the eyes with the hand im- 



194 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

parts life as well by the shadow it casts on the 
countenance as by its characteristic propriety. 
The large fabulous-looking heads of the music-sub- 
dued. Cerberus sleep well, and the group takes at 
once such hold of the imagination that their ex- 
pression seems that of involuntary sleep. It is in 
itself a great merit in a work of art to make the 
mind of the beholder assist its effect. The selec- 
tion of the subject and the execution are equally 
happy, and denote the genial Artist. We went 
next to Thorwaldsen's studio. Here I was some- 
what disappointed. 

At the Barberini Palace we saw the Beatrice 
Cenci of Guido. People go to see it on account 
of her awful story ; and the story is not fully told 
to one who has not seen the picture. Guido was 
wrought up to his highest power of execution. The 
face is of the most beautiful, and through this 
beauty streams the bewildered soul, telling the ter- 
rific tale. It looks like a picture after which the 
artist had taken a long rest. We next went hastily 
through the Doria Gallery, one of the richest 
private collections in the world. 

Tuesday, Feb. 28th. — After breakfast I walked 
to the Minerva church to see the funeral ceremony 
for a cardinal. In the square before the church 
was the Pope's carriage with six horses, and a 
score of the scarlet carriages of the cardinals. 
The interior of the church was hung with black and 



ROME. 195 

gold. The body of the deceased cardinal lay in 
state, in the centre of the nave, on a broad bulky 
catafalc raised about ten feet. Around it at some 
distance purple candles were burning. The music 
of the service was solemn and well executed, in 
part by castrati. The Pope descended from his 
throne, and, supported on either side by a cardi- 
nal, and attended by other ecclesiastical dignitaries, 
went to the front of the couch and pronounced ab- 
solution upon the deceased. He then walked twice 
round the body, throwing up incense towards it out 
of a golden censer. His pontifical robe was crim- 
son and gold. He evidently performed the service 
with emotion. The whole spectacle was imposing 
and luxurious. The gorgeous couch and habili- 
ments of the deceased, the rich and various robes, 
the purple candles, the sumptuous solemn hangings, 
the incense and the mellow music, compounded a 
refined feast for the senses. Such ceremonies 
speak but feebly to the soul. In the crowd that 
filled the large church there was observable some 
curiosity and a quiet air of enjoyment, but very 
little devotion. After the service, as the Pope's 
carriage on leaving the square passed close by me, 
an elderly man at my side dropped suddenly on his 
knees, shouting " Santo Padre, la benedizione" 
which the Pope gave as his horses went off in a 
trot, and of which I, too, from my position, had a 
share. 



190 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

In the afternoon we hired seats in the Corso, to 
see the last day of the Carnival. The Italians, dis- 
ciplined by Church and State, know how to run 
wild on such an occasion without grossness or 
disorder. People all shouting and fooling, and 
no coarse extravagances or interruptions of good- 
humor. At sunset the street was cleared in the 
centre, and half a dozen horses started at one end, 
without riders, to race to the other. After this, 
the evening ended with the entertainment of the 
mocolo, which is a thin wax-lighted taper, where- 
with one half the crowd provide themselves, while 
the others, with handkerchiefs and similar weapons, 
strike at them to put them out. This makes an 
illumination of the whole street, and keeps up a 
constant noisy combat. Thousands of people in 
masks and fantastic costumes. 

Wednesday, March 1st, 1843. — If priests were 
raised nearer to God by distinguishing themselves 
from their fellow-men through the means of gor- 
geous garniture and pompous ceremony, the ex- 
hibition we this morning witnessed at the Sistine 
Chapel would have been solemn and inspiring. Up 
flight after flight of the broad gently ascending 
stairway of St. Peter's, we reached the celebrated 
chapel. Seated on the pontifical throne, on one 
side of the altar at the further extremity of the 
chapel, under Michael Angelo's Last Judgment, 
was the Pope. On his head was a lofty mitre of 



SIST1NE CHAPEL. 197 

silver tissue, and his stole was of crimson and gold. 
To his right, on an elevated broad ottoman that 
ran along the wall of the chapel and crossed it 
about the middle, were ranged more than twenty 
cardinals in robes of light purple silk and gold. 
Around the Pope was a crowd of ministering prel- 
ates, and at the foot of each cardinal sat, in a 
picturesque dress, an attendant, apparently a priest, 
who aided him to change his robe, — an opera- 
tion that was performed more than once during the 
long service. The folio missal, out of which the 
Pope read, was held before him ; when he ap- 
proached the altar from his throne his robe was 
held up ; and in the same way one of the attendant 
prelates removed and replaced several times his 
mitre. Part of the service consisted in kissing his 
foot, — a ceremony which was performed by about 
a hundred bishops and prelates in various ecclesias- 
tical costumes. This being the first day of Lent, 
Ash- Wednesday, the benediction of the ashes is 
given always by the Pope, and on the heads of 
those who have the privilege of kissing his toe 
(cardinals bend no lower than the knee) he lays a 
pinch of the consecrated ashes. 

When I look back to the whole spectacle, though 
only after the lapse of a few hours, I seem to have 
been present at some barbaric pageant. The char- 
acter of the exhibition overbears my knowledge of 
its purport, and I could doubt that I have wit- 
nessed a Christian ritual. 



198 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Afterwards in passing over Monte Cavallo, we 
came suddenly upon the colossal statues by Phidias 
and Praxiteles. It was a rich surprise. Like St. 
Peter's and the Colosseum they surpass your ex- 
pectation. Their heroic forms stood out against 
the sky like majestic apparitions come to testify to 
the glories of old Greece. 

In the afternoon we went to Gibson's studio, 
where we were pleased with the artist and his 
works. 

Thursday, March 2d. — First to the Capitol, 
built, under the direction of Michael Angelo, on 
the foundation of the ancient. Innumerable frag- 
ments and statues. In the Colossal River-God in 
the Court, the grace and slumbering power of the 
large recumbent figure are remarkable. Accord- 
ing to our custom at the first visit, we went hastily 
through the gallery, only pausing before the dying 
gladiator. Here, as in all masterpieces of Art, is 
the intense infusion of the will of the Artist into 
his work. This is the inscrutable power of genius. 

Thence to the Church of Santa Maria Majore, 
the nave of which is supported by thirty-six beau- 
tiful columns, taken from a temple of Juno. Mod- 
ern Rome is doubly enriched out of the spoils of 
ancient. 

In the afternoon we drove to the Vatican. What 
a wilderness of marble ! You walk, I was about 
to say, for miles through avenues of sculpture. 



BATHS OF CAR AC ALL A. 199 

Of the Apollo, Laocoon, and Antinous, I can say 
nothing to-day, except that great statues lose much 
in casts. What an edifice ! Drove to the Villa 
Borghese. 

Friday, March 2>d. — Our first stage to-day in 
our daily travel over Rome was at the Baths of 
Caracalla, one of the most emphatic testimonials of 
Roman magnificence. The ruins, consisting now 
of little else than the outer and dividing walls, 
cover several acres. Sixteen hundred persons 
could bathe at a time. Besides the baths, there 
were halls for games and for sculpture, and here 
have been dug up several masterpieces. Here and 
there a piece of the lofty roof is preserved ; and we 
ascended to the top of one of the halls, whence 
there is a good view of a large section of the re- 
gion of ruins. Except in the Fora and Arches, one 
sees nowhere columns among the ruins. These, 
as well as nearly all marble in whatever shape, 
being too precious to be left to adorn the massive 
remnants of pagan Rome, have been taken to 
beautify the churches and palaces of her Christian 
heir. 

From the Baths of Caracalla we went along the 
Appian way, passing the tomb of the Scipios, and 
under the arch of Drusus, to the tomb of Cecilia 
Metella, a large massive round tower, the largest 
monument ever raised to a woman. Thence to the 
Columbarium or tomb of the household of the 



200 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Caesars. The name is derived from the resem- 
blance of the structure to a pigeon-house, as well 
in its general form as in that of the little semicir- 
cular receptacles for the ashes. 

In the afternoon we visited among other churches 
that of Santa Maria Degli Angeli, formerly the 
Baths of Diocletian, which was adapted to the 
shape and purpose of a church by Michael Angelo. 
A grand one it is with its immense pillars of Egyp- 
tian granite. 

As, according to Roman Catholic usage, several 
masses are performed in one morning to as many 
different congregations, a given number of inhabi- 
tants would require as Catholics a much smaller 
number of churches than it would being Protes- 
tant. But were the whole people of Rome to 
assemble at worship, at the same hour, in as many 
churches as would be needed for easy accommo- 
dation, even then nine tenths of them would be 
empty. For three or four centuries the population 
has been at no time more numerous than it is now, 
and seldom so numerous ; and owing to civil and 
foreign wars previous to the fifteenth century, and 
to the seventy years' absence of the Papal Court, 
it has probably not been greater than at present 
since the downfall of the Empire. So that there 
always have been ten times as many churches as 
are needed. Rome has a population of about one 
hundred and sixty thousand souls, and counts over 



SPIRITUAL VITALITY. 201 

three hundred churches. With thirty, all her 
people would have ample room for worship. Had 
half of the thought, labor, and money, wasted in 
building, adorning, and preserving the others, been 
bestowed upon schools and seminaries, there would 
have been not less religion, and far more mental 
culture and morality ; and Rome might now be real- 
ly the intellectual and spiritual capital of the world, 
instead of being the centre of a decrepid form of 
Christianity, to which she clings chiefly by the 
material ties that bind men to an ecclesiastical 
system which embosoms high places of worldly 
eminence. 

The above estimate is not made in a spirit of 
barren detraction ; it shows into what extravagant 
abuses of God's best gifts men will run. There is 
at any rate comfort in the evidence here presented 
— if such were wanting — of great spiritual vital- 
ity in human nature. Part of the gross misdirec- 
tion thereof may be ascribed to the mental dark- 
ness during many of the first ages of Christian 
Europe, and part to the selfishness necessarily in- 
herent in a body constituted like the Roman Cath- 
olic priesthood. The darkness has been greatly 
diminished, and individual independence has been 
sufficiently developed not to abide much longer cor- 
porate usurpations, civil or ecclesiastical. There 
may be hope that through this natural fund of spir- 
ituality, under healthier development and clearer 



202 SCENES AND THOUGHTS TN EUROPE. 

guidance, humanity will go on righting itself more 
and more, and that under its influence even Rome 
shall be rejuvenated and cease to be the hoary jug- 
gler that out of the spiritual wants of man wheedles 
raiment of gold for her own body and mansions of 
marble. 

Drove out to Mount Sacer, and afterwards to 
the Pincian. 

Saturday, March 4th. — Rain every day. 
Among the curiosities we this morning inspected 
in the library of the Vatican were a collection of 
cameos and other small antiques dug up in Rome ; 
several of the bronze plates whereon were inscribed 
the decrees of the Senate, but of the fallen Senate 
under the Emperors ; specimens of Giotto and 
Cimabue ; manuscript of Cicero's Treatise on the 
Republic, made in the fifth century, and written 
over by St. Augustine, with a treatise on the 
Psalms ; manuscript of Petrarch ; illuminated edi- 
tion of the Divina Commedia ; papyrus. To us as 
well as to the Pope it is a convenience that St. 
Peter's and the Vatican are cheek by cheek. On 
coming out of the library w r e entered the great 
church to enjoy its beautiful vastness. 

In the afternoon we went to see Michael An- 
gelo's colossal statue of Moses in the church of 
St. Peter in chains, a beautiful church (the interior 
I mean) with twenty fluted Parian columns. Here 
are preserved the chains of St. Peter ! The Moses 



THE MOSES OF MICHAEL ANGELO. 203 

is a masterpiece. It justifies the sublime lines of 
the sonnet it inspired to Zappi : — 

Questi e Mose" quando scendea del monte, 
E gran parte del Nume avea nel Volto.* 

Power and thought are stamped on the brow ; the 
nose breathes the breath of a concentrated giant ; 
an intellectual smile sits on the large oriental 
mouth, which looks apt to utter words of comfort 
or command ; the long, thick, folded beard be- 
speaks vigor, and gives grandeur to the counte- 
nance ; and the eyes, of which, contrary to the 
usage of high sculpture, the pupils are marked, 
absolutely sparkle. The figure is seated, with how- 
ever one foot drawn back as if ready to rise, — an 
attitude correspondent to the life and fire of the 
countenance. From this grand work one learns 
what a mighty soul was in Michael Angelo. 

In the sacristy is a beautiful head by Guido, rep- 
resenting Hope, as rapt and still as an angel listen- 
ing to the music of Heaven. In this church was 
held under the Emperor Constantine, as says an 
inscription in it, a council, which condemned Arian 
and other schismatics, and burnt their books. We 
next visited St. Martin on the Hill, also constructed 
with columns from an ancient temple. Through 
the church we descended into a vault below where 
had been imperial baths, and afterwards a church 
of the early Christians before Constantine. Ad- 

* This is Moses when he came down from the mountain, 
And had in his countenance a great part of the Deity. 



204 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

joining this venerable spot was an opening that led 
into the catacombs, where the persecuted Chris- 
tians used to conceal themselves. On slabs in the 
upper church were inscribed the names of many 
martyrs whose tombs had been found below ; among 
tliem those of several popes ! Thence, towards sun- 
set, we went to the church of the Jesuits, laden, 
like so many others, with pictures and marbles and 
sparkling altars, and sepulchral monuments. The 
grand altar, just finished, cost upwards of one 
hundred thousand dollars. On one side of the 
church a thin sallow Jesuit in a dark robe and cap 
was preaching to about a hundred persons, chiefly 
of the poorer class. I regretted that I had not 
come in time to hear more of his sermon, for a 
purer pronunciation and sweeter voice I never lis- 
tened to. His elocution, too, was good and his 
gesticulation graceful, and his matter and manner 
were naive and unjesuit-like. He told his auditors 
that what the holy Virgin required of them, espe- 
cially now during Lent, was to examine their souls, 
and if they found them spotted with sins to free 
themselves therefrom by a full confession, and if 
uot, to betake themselves more and more to the 
zealous cultivation of the virtues. There was a 
sincerity, simplicity, and sweetness in the feeling 
and utterance of this young man, that were most 
fascinating. When he had finished, he glided 
away into the recesses of the dim church like an 
apparition. 



ST. PETER'S AGAIN. 205 

Sunday, March bih. — Today we remitted our 
labors. Late in the morning I walked up the stair- 
way of the Trinity of the Mount to the garden of 
the Villa Medici ; and afterwards to Monte Ca- 
vallo to behold again the two colossal Greek stat- 
ues. They must be seen early or late, for at other 
hours the sky dazzles the sight as you attempt to 
look up at them. 

In the afternoon we drove to St. Peter's. Its 
immensity enlarges at each repeated beholding. 
It is so light, — the interior I mean, — so illumi- 
nated, that it looks as though it had been poised 
from above, and not built upward from an earthly 
foundation. In one section of it is a series of con- 
fessionals, dedicated to the various languages of 
Europe. In each sat a priest ready to listen to 
and shrive in the tongue inscribed over his portal. 
Vespers at four. The voices were fine, but the 
music, not being sacred, was not effective in a 
church. In music one hears at times cadences of 
such expression that they seem about to utter a 
revelation ; and then they fade of a sudden into 
common melody, as though the earthly medium 
were incompetent to transmit the heavenly voice. 

We drove afterward to the Pincian Hill in a cold 
north wind. 

Monday, March 6th. — Walked before break- 
fast to Monte Cavallo. Our first stage after 
breakfast was to the house of Nero, over which 



203 SCLXES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

were built, in part, the Baths of Titus. This is one 
of the best preserved bits of old Rome. The walls 
of brick are from three to five feet thick, the rooms 
nearly forty high. On some of the ceilings and 
walls are distinct specimens of Arabesque. Thence, 
to look at the holy staircase of the Lateran, said to 
be of the house of Pontius Pilate ! No one is per- 
mitted to mount the stairs except on his knees ; 
and being of stone, they are kept covered with 
wood to preserve them from being worn out. In 
the Church of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, 
founded by St. Helen, the mother of Constantine, 
is preserved the cross of one of the thieves cruci- 
fied with Jesus ! 

In the Gallery of the Colonna Palace we saw 
this morning several fine portraits and a beautiful 
St. Agnes, by Guido, with that heavenward look 
he delighted to paint, and painted so well. In the 
magnificent hall of the palace we were shown the 
portrait of the Colonna who commanded at Le- 
panto. In the afternoon we went for the second 
time to the Vatican. How the most beautiful 
things teach you to admire them ! Genius, which 
is by its essence original, embodies its idea, the 
totality whereof even the most genial sympathy 
cannot at first take in. By repetition the whole 
spirit of the creation is imbibed, and only then 
does the mind receive the full image of what it 
beholds, learning thus, by a necessary process, 



GRAND VIEW OF ROME. 207 

from beauty itself to appreciate its quality. Thus 
the Apollo will go on growing into our vision until 
we can, if not entirely, yet deeply enjoy its inex- 
haustible beauty. On coming out of the Vatican 
we walked again into St. Peter's. Are its propor- 
tions perfect and its colors all in unison, or is it 
its vastness that tones down all the constituents 
to harmony ? It fills me always with delight and 
wonder. 

Towards sunset we drove to the church of St. 
Peter, in Montorio, whence, from the terrace, is a 
sweeping view of Rome. We looked down over 
the " Eternal City." Directly in front, and east 
of us about a mile, was the majestic Colossoum. 
Between us and the Tiber was the camp of Por- 
senna. To the left, beyond the Tiber, was once 
the Campus Martius, now the most thickly peopled 
quarter of modern Rome. An epitome of a large 
portion of the world's history lay at our feet. 
There stood the capitol of the Republic, and be- 
yond, the ruins of the Palace of the Cassars, and 
all about us were the palaces and churches of their 
papal heir. Back of the church is the Fontana 
Paolina, built of stone from the Forum of Nerva, 
by Pope Paul V., a Borghese. The water gushes 
out through five apertures in volume enough for a 
Swiss cascade. 

Tuesday, March 1th. — We drove out this morn- 
ing to the Villa Pamphili, the grounds of which, 



208 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

having a circumference of four miles, are the most 
extensive of the Roman villas. Here are stately 
umbrella-shaped pines. Fields of grass, thickly 
studded with flowers, verified what had hitherto 
been to me a poetic fiction. From the top of the 
house is a wide noble prospect. Returning, we 
drove through part of the Jews' Quarter to the 
Square of Navona, the largest in Rome, in ancient 
times a race-course, now a vegetable market. In 
the afternoon we went to the Pantheon, the best 
preserved remnant of ancient Rome, built by 
Agrippa, the son-in-law of Augustus, as the great 
hall of the public baths by him established, after- 
wards converted into a temple to Jupiter, then to all 
the gods, — whence its name, — and as early as the 
seventh century consecrated a Christian church, 
under the name of St. Mary of the Martyrs, by 
Pope Boniface IV., who buried under the chief 
altar twenty-eight wagon-loads of relics of the 
martyrs. The light (and rain) comes in through 
a wide circle left open at the top of the dome. 
The pavement is of porphyry. Here Raphael is 
buried. 

We drove afterwards to the Villa Borghese, 
crowded with ancient marble, among which is a 
long series of busts of Roman emperors in " an- 
tique red." The heads are nearly all of one type, 
and denote the energetic, practical character of 
the Romans. The statue of Pauline, one of the 



SCULPTURE. 209 

treasures of the villa, is the most beautiful work I 
have seen of Canova. Returning, we saw near 
the gate some rich Italian faces. Italy reminds 
one at times of a beautiful Guido Magdalen, her 
tearful countenance upturned towards heaven, so 
lovely in her affliction, such subdued passion in 
her luxurious features, such hope in her lucent 
eyes. 

Wednesday, March 8th. — We spent most of 
the morning in the studios of sculptors, and the 
afternoon in churches. What a multiplication of 
the human form in marble ! The churches are 
peopled with statues brown with age, and in the 
studios they dazzle you with youthful whiteness. 

To describe in verse the surface of a man's 
mind is not to write poetry ; nor is the imitation 
of the human body the exercise of a fine Art. 
The sculptor's function is to concentrate in one 
body the beauty and character of many. When 
he does this he creates, and until he creates, he 
is not up to his vocation. Nature is not always 
beautiful, but at the bottom of all her phenomena 
is the spirit of beauty.. Her essence is beauty, 
and this essence the worker with the chisel must 
extract and then embody, else is he a barren 
artist. 

We saw this morning Guido's Aurora. Here is 
a subject most apt for pictorial representation. 
The idea has sufficient intensity to irradiate the 



210 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

whole body. In few large compositions is there 
soul enough in the thought to animate the mem- 
bers ; or if there be fire, there is lack of beauty. 
Here the idea, the parent of the whole work, is 
both strong and beautiful, and the execution being 
correspondent, the effect is complete. Afterwards, 
in the Minerva Church, we saw a statue of Christ, 
by Michael Angelo. It wants character and 
beauty. The subject is not suited to Michael 
Angelo's genius. 

Tliursday, March 9th. — We visited this morn- 
ing the studio of Wolf, a German sculptor of rep- 
utation. A sweet dancing-girl and a graceful 
Diana attracted us most. The foreign artists in 
Italy seem wellnigh to take the lead of the native, 
owing, probably, to the enjoyment of greater lib- 
erty, — the Italians being more under the chilling 
sway of academical rules, and the influence of the 
by no means pure example of Canova. We walked 
afterwards in the garden of the Villa Medici, the 
prison of Galileo during his trial, now the French 
Academy ; and into its hall of plaster casts, where 
is a collection of the best antiques. This is going 
into the highest company. These are genuine 
aristocrats, choice specimens of manhood and 
womanhood. With many of them, time and igno- 
rance have dealt roughly. Some are without 
arms, others without legs, and some without heads, 
but still they live. In their mythology, what a 



ENGLISH PRELATE. 211 

poem the ancient Greeks gave birth to and be- 
queathed to the world. We next went to one of 
the churches, to hear a sermon from an English 
Catholic prelate. During Lent, there is daily 
preaching in many of the churches. Chairs were 
set for two hundred persons, but there were pres- 
ent not more than fifty. The preacher was evi- 
dently a man of intellect, but dry and argumenta- 
tive. The drift of his discourse was to show that 
priests are essential to salvation. 

Men, with all their selfishness, and perhaps 
through a modification thereof, have ever been 
prone to give up their affairs in trust to others, the 
trustees dividing themselves into the three hitherto 
inevitable classes, the legal, the medical, and the 
theological. Some even avail themselves to the 
full of all these helps and substitutes, abandoning 
the conduct of their worldly possessions to their 
man of business, their bodies passively to their 
physician, and their souls as passively to their pas- 
tor. These languid negatives are of course few. 
By degrees the axiom is getting to be valued, that, 
to thrive, whether secularly or spiritually, a man 
must look to his own interests. People are be- 
ginning to discern, that health is not a blessing in 
the gift of doctors, that religion is independent 
of hierarchies, and that the first preachers of 
Christianity were quite a different kind of men 
from most of the latest. Some men are preemi- 



212 SCEXES AXD THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

nently endowed to develop and feed the spiritual 
element of our nature ; and most reverently do I 
regard and cordially hearken to such wherever I 
meet with them. As in the preacher before me 
I perceived no marks of such ins juration, and as 
there was neither eloquence nor art to give his 
discourse the attraction of an intellectual enter- 
tainment, we soon left the church, — a movement 
which can be effected here without notice. He 
handled his argument not without skill, and doubt- 
less the sermon was edifying to most of his audi- 
tors, their minds having been drilled by him and 
his colleagues into the habit of acquiescence. 

The ordinary service was going on at the same 
time independently in a side-chapel, where a very 
aged ecclesiastic, in a white satin embroidered 
robe, was saying mass, which to us, in the outskirts 
of the English company, was quite audible. He 
was entirely alone, having no assistant at the altar 
and not a single worshipper ; until just before he 
concluded, a bright-faced boy, ten or twelve years 
of age, came in with a long staff, to put out the 
tall candle. Ere the venerable father had ceased 
praying, the little fellow had the extinguisher up, 
thrusting it now and then half over the flame with 
playful impatience. The instant the old man had 
finished, out went the candle, and the boy, taking 
the large missal in his arms, walked off, looking 
over towards us for notice, and restraining with 



THE C0RSIN1 GALLERY. 213 

difficulty his steps to the pace of the aged priest, 
who tottered after him. 

On leaving the church, we went for the first 
time to the Borghese Gallery, freely open to stran- 
gers, and to artists, of whom, in the different rooms, 
there were several taking copies. Strangers in 
Rome owe much to the unexampled liberality of 
the Italian nobles in opening to them the treasures 
of their palaces and villas. 

In the afternoon to the Vatican, where again we 
had a cloudy sky, and were therefore again disap- 
pointed before the great frescos of Raphael, 
which, from the darkness of the rooms wherein 
they are painted, have not light enough even on 
the sunniest days. On coming out we took our 
accustomed walk up under the dome of St. Pe- 
ter's. 

Friday, March 10th. — We visited this morn- 
ing the Corsini Gallery, in which is the bound 
Prometheus of Salvator Rosa, with his fiery stamp 
upon it. The horror which a lesser genius could 
excite cannot be subdued by any mastery of art. 
The keeper of the rooms, with the hostile feeling 
reciprocated among the inhabitants of the different 
sections of Italy, remarked, that none but a Nea- 
politan would choose so bloody a subject. Another 
remarkable picture in this collection is a head of 
Christ bound with thorns, by Guercino. The 
agony, the fortitude, the purity are all there, and 



214 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

in the upcast translucent eyes is an infinite depth 
of feeling, as of mingled expostulation and resig- 
nation, that recalls vividly the touching words, 
" My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" 
It is one of the masterpieces of Rome. 

At twelve we found ourselves in St. Peter's, to 
witness the ceremony which takes place every Fri- 
day during Lent. The Pope, attended by his 
household and a numerous body of cardinals and 
other prelates, says prayers successively at several 
different altars. The Swiss Guard, in the old-time 
costume with pikes, formed a hollow oblong, within 
which the Pope and the whole cortege of priests 
knelt. For the Pope and cardinals a cushion was 
provided ; the others knelt on the marble pave- 
ment. The Pope prayed inaudibly, and seemed to 
do so with heart. The strange uniform of the 
Guards, the numerous robed priests kneeling be- 
hind their chief, the gorgeous towering vaults above 
them, and the sacred silence, made a beautiful 
scene. 

In the afternoon we drove to the Villa Mills, 
built above the ruins of the House of Augustus, 
on Mount Palatine. Through a door in the gar- 
den, round which clustered lemons, roses, and 
oranges, we descended to several of the rooms of 
Augustus, the floor whereof is about thirty feet 
below the present surface. From various points 
in the garden w r e had views of the majestic rem- 



THE VILLA MILLS. 215 

nants of imperial Rome, — the Colosseum, the 
Baths of Caracalla, the Temple of Peace, part of 
the Forum, the Temple of Yesta, the Pyramid of 
Caius Cestius, the tomb of Cicilia Metella, inter- 
spersed with convents and churches and scattered 
buildings. Over the wall on the southern side 
of the villa-grounds you look directly down upon 
some remains of the Circus Maximus, which occu- 
pied the valley between the Palatine and Aven- 
tine Hills, and where took place the rape of the 
Sabines. It will take a long while for Niebuhr to 
efface belief in the reality of those early Roman 
doings. At last we ascended to a terrace built 
over a spot where had once been a temple of Juno, 
whence was a prospect of modern Rome with its 
throng of cupolas. We next mounted the Capitol 
Hill, to go into the Church Araca^li. 

Saturday , March lltJi. — We visited this morn- 
ing the convent of the Sacre Goeur on the Trinita 
del Monte. This is a sisterhood of French ladies, 
some of them noble, devoted to the education of 
the upper classes. The establishment looked the 
model of neatness. The pupils, who had a uniform 
dress, rose and courtesied to us as w T e entered the 
rooms. They looked healthy and happy. The 
sisters had the manner and tone of well-bred ladies, 
chastened by seclusion from the rivalries of the 
world. It is one of the results of Catholic organ- 
ization and discipline, that, in an institution like 



216 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

this, a field of utility is opened to those whom dis- 
appointment, or distaste for excitement, or a natu- 
ral proneness to piety, disposes to withdraw from 
the world. Through the principle of association, 
the various resources of many are centred upon a 
high object, and much activity, that would other- 
wise have lain dormant or have been wasted, is 
turned to account. From one of the lofty dormi- 
tories, with its numerous clean white beds, we 
looked out into a broad garden belonging to the 
convent, and beyond this to the Ludovisi grounds 
and villa. 

Afterwards, at the room of Flatz, a Tyrolese 
painter, we were charmed with the artist and his 
works. His subjects are all religious, and are 
executed with uncommon grace and feeling. A 
pupil of his, too, Fink, is a young man of prom- 
ise. 

There are people with minds so exclusively re- 
ligious, that religion does not — as is its office — 
sustain, temper, exalt their being ; it fills, it is their 
being. When the character is upright and simple, 
such persons become earnest and calm ; when 
otherwise, they are officious and sentimental. If 
their intellect is sensuous, they delight in the im- 
agery and manipulating ceremonies of the Catholic 
worship, and then, having of course, by their orig- 
inal structure, no intellectual breadth or power, they 
will be liable, under the assaults of a picture-loving 



MUSIC AT THE SACRE C(EUR. 217 

mind and absorbing devotional feeling, to become 
Romanists even in Rome itself! 

Sunday, March 12th. — This afternoon we re- 
turned to the chapel of the Sacre Cceur, to hear 
the music at the evening benediction. It was a 
hymn from the sisterhood, accompanied by the 
organ. The service commenced silently at the 
altar, round which curled profuse incense, that 
glowed before the lighted candles like silver dust. 
The few persons present were kneeling, when the 
stillness was broken by a gentle gush of sound 
from the invisible choir up behind us. It came 
like a heavenly salutation. The soft tones seemed 
messengers out of the Infinite, that led the spirit 
up to whence they had come. At the end of each 
verse a brief response issued from deep male 
voices at the opposite end of the church, near the 
altar, sounding like an earthly answer to the heav- 
enly call. Then again were the ears possessed by 
the feminine harmony, that poured itself down 
upon the dim chapel like an unasked blessing. 

Monday, March 13th. — This morning, at the 
Spada Palace, we saw the statue of Pompey, 
which " all the while ran blood " when Caesar fell 
under the blows of the conspirators in the Capitol. 
It is a colossal figure, about ten feet in height, 
of fine character, dignified, vigorous, and life-like. 
We drove afterwards out to the English burying- 
ground, where lie the ashes of Shelley, " enriching 



218 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

even Rome," as his wife had a right to say. I 
revere the character, and admire the genius of 
Shelley, yet I was not moved by the presence of 
his tomb. Emotion cannot be summoned at will. 
I have at times, in a holy spot, found myself in a 
state of utter insensibility, and, instead of turning 
my eyes inward under its spirit-moving influence, 
have caught my lips playing with the reminiscence 
of a jest, as irrepressible as it was impertinent in 
such a place. For all that, the visit was not bar- 
ren ; the feeling would come afterwards. 

In the afternoon, we visited the rooms of Over- 
beck, the distinguished German painter, a great 
master in drawing and composition. Like Flatz, 
his subjects are all scriptural. 

Very few artists being able to achieve the high- 
est triumph in execution, which is the transparence 
and vivid beauty of healthiest life, addict them- 
selves naturally, in a critical age, to an emulous 
cultivation of those qualities which through study 
are more attainable, and then attach to them a kind 
of importance which they do not deserve. This 
seems to be the case just now with composition, an 
element which may shine in a picture unworthy of 
permanent regard, and which stands related to the 
genial quality in Art as the narrative does to the 
poetical in a printed volume. Under genuine inspi- 
ration, the parts of a work will always, when Art is 
out of its first rudiments, put themselves together 



THE PINCIAN HILL. 219 

competently to the development of the idea, al- 
though the artist may not excel in composition ; 
but from the most skilful combination of the con- 
stituent parts will never be generated that unfad- 
ing charm of life and beauty which genius alone 
can impart, and the production whereof even genius 
cannot explain. In short, composition is the intel- 
lectual department of painting, and will be inef- 
fective until vivified by the fire of feeling. 

We walked afterwards through the gallery of 
the Capitol, and then to the Tarpeian rock. 

Tuesday, March lAtJi. — We commenced the 
day, which was bright at last, with a walk on the 
Pincian. Visited in the morning a second time the 
rooms of the German painter Flatz, and his pupil. 
We drove afterwards through the sunny air past 
the Forum and Colosseum out to the grand church 
of St. John of the Lateran, where, in the court, is 
the finest obelisk in Rome, brought, like the others, 
from Egypt, the land of obelisks. It is a single 
shaft of red granite, more than a hundred feet high. 

In the afternoon, we walked again on the Pin- 
cian, amidst a throng of people from all parts of 
the world, in carriages, on horseback, and on foot. 
How seldom you meet a fine old countenance ; one 
that has been enriched by years, that has the au- 
tumnal mellowness of joyous and benignant sensa- 
tions. Oftener you see on old shoulders a face 
corrugated and passion-ploughed, that may be 



220 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

likened to a river-bed, which, deserted by the tur- 
bid spring flood, shows a hard, parched surface, be- 
strewn with driftwood and unsightly fragments, 
that tell how high the muddy torrent has revelled. 

At six, we went to see the Colosseum by moon- 
light. The wondrous old pile grows more eloquent 
still at night ; its vastness expands, its majesty 
grows more majestic ; the dimness of the hour 
seems congenial to its antiquity. The patches of 
moonlight glistening among its arches look like 
half revelations of a thousand mysteries that lie 
coiled up in its bosom. It has the air of a mystic 
temple sprung out of the gloom, for a Sibyl to 
brood in and prophesy. 

Wednesday, March loth. — This morning, we 
drove out of the Porta del Pojoolo, the northern 
gate, a mile and a half just over the bridge of 
Mole, and returning along the right bank of the 
Tiber, with the Villa Madama and Monte Mario 
on the right, we reentered Rome near St. Peter's. 
Thence, passing through the busiest part of the 
modern city, we drove between the Palatine and 
Aventine hills, round the Colosseum, by the three 
columns that are left of the Forum of Nerva, into 
the gay Corso, passing thus suddenly, as we do 
almost every day, from amidst the gigantic brown 
fragments that silently tell of the might of ancient 
Rome into the bustle and ostentation of a modern 
capital. I spent an hour afterwards in Thorwald- 



ST. PAUL'S. 221 

sen's studio, with a still growing enjoyment. Great 
poems are incarnations of a nation's mind, whence 
in weaker times it may draw nourishment to help 
to renew its vigor. The creations of Shakspeare 
and Milton rear themselves, the steadfast mountains 
of the mental world of England, up to which the 
people can at all times ascend to inhale a bracing 
air. So, too, after-sculptors will be able to refresh 
themselves at the clear fountain of Thorwaldsen's 
purity and simplicity. 

Thursday, March 16th. — We drove out to the 
new St. Paul's they are building on the site of the 
old one, more than a mile out of the St. Paul Gate. 
This church is one of the largest, and the Pope is 
rebuilding and adorning it in a style of unmatched 
magnificence. Nations and systems cannot pause 
in their career. Each must fulfil its destiny. 
From the bosom of Eternity they are launched 
forth to perform a given circuit, and long after 
they have culminated they continue, though under 
relaxed momentum, to give out sparks of the orig- 
inal fire, and decline consistently to their end. 
The Papal State is loaded with a growing debt ; 
Rome has churches enough for ten times its actual 
population ; advancing civilization rejects more and 
more the sensuous as an auxiliary to the spiritual. 
Yet, at an enormous cost, this church is reerected, 
dazzling with pillars and marble and gold, capacious 
to hold tens of thousands, though distant from the 



222 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

city in the blighted Campagna ; a token not only 
that the spirit of Romanism is unchanged, but that 
it has yet the will and vigor, in the face of material 
difficulties, and in defiance of civilization, to mani- 
fest itself in mediaeval pomp and unchristian magni- 
ficence. 

On getting back within the walls of the city, we 
turned into the Via Appia, and stopped at the 
tomb of the Scipios, down into which I groped 
with a lighted candle twenty or thirty feet below 
the present surface, in a labyrinth of low vaults, 
where I saw several vertical slabs with inscriptions. 
After dinner we drove to the Villa Mattei, whence 
there is a fine view southward of the aqueducts 
and mountains. Late in the afternoon I ascended, 
in company with Crawford, to the top of the tower 
of the Capitol. The sky was cloudless, and the 
unparalleled scene seemed to float in the purple 
light. Mountain, plain, and city, the eye took in 
at a sweep. From fifteen to forty miles in more 
than a semicircle ranged the Apennines, the near- 
est clusters being the Alban and the Sabine Hills. 
Contracting the view within these, the eye em- 
braced the dim Campagna, in the midst of which, 
right under me, lay the noisy city beside its silent 
mother. Looking down from such an elevation, 
the Seven Hills, unless you know well their position, 
are not traceable ; and most of the ruins, not hav- 
ing, as when seen from the plain, the relief of the 



VILLA ALBANI. 223 

sky, grow indistinct ; only the Colosseum towers 
broadly before you, a giant among dwarfs, chal- 
lenging your wonder always at the colossal gran- 
deur of Imperial Rome. In the west, St. Peter's 
broke the line of the horizon. From countless tow- 
ers, spires, cupolas, columns, obelisks, long shadows 
fell upon the sea of tiled roof. The turbid Tiber 
showed itself here and there, winding as of old 
through the throng. I gazed until, the sun being 
set, the mountains began to fade, the ruins to be 
swallowed up in the brown earth, and the whole 
fascinating scene wore that lifeless look which fol- 
lows immediately the sinking of the sun below the 
horizon, the earth seeming suddenly to fall asleep. 
Friday , March 11th. — Through the high walls 
that enclose the gardens and villas in Italy, we 
drove out to the Villa Albani, reputed the richest 
about Rome in antique sculpture. There is a 
statue of Tiberius, which makes him shine among 
several of his imperial colleagues in grace and 
manly proportions, — a distinction which he proba- 
bly owes to the superiority of his Artist ; a fragment 
from the bas-reliefs of the Parthenon at Athens, 
and other esteemed antiques in half-size and minia- 
ture, amidst a legion of busts, — among them one 
of Themistocles, of much character. Unhappily, on 
these occasions you cannot give yourself up to the 
pleasure of believing that you gaze on the features 
of one of the great ancients ; for even the identity 



224 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

of the bust is seldom unquestionable, and of course 
still less so is the likeness. It were a goodly sight 
to behold an undoubted portrait of Plato, or So- 
crates, or Brutus. The villa is in a florid style of 
architecture, and the grounds are laid out in 
straight walks between walls of evergreen. The 
day was balmy, and the parterre walls were alive 
with lizards darting about in the sunshine. We 
next drove out of the St. John Gate to get a near 
view of the aqueducts, which have been well likened 
to giants striding across the Campagna. On reen- 
tering the Gate, the front of St. John of the Lateran 
presented itself very grandly. It is purer than the 
facade of St. Peter's, in which the perpendicular 
continuity is broken, — a fault almost universal in 
the fronts of Italian churches. The statues, too, on 
the St. John, from being colossal and somewhat 
crowded, have a better effect than statues in that 
position generally have. 

In the afternoon we drove and walked in the 
grounds of the Villa Borghese. The entire circuit 
is at least two miles, and the grounds are varied 
both by art and nature. Strangers can hardly be 
sufficiently grateful to the family that opens to 
them such a resource. I should have stated, when 
speaking of the statuary in the villa, that the orig- 
inal and celebrated Borghese collection of antiques 
was sold to the Paris Museum, in the reign of Napo- 
leon, for thirteen millions of francs. The present 
collection has been made since that period. 



PALACE OF THE CAESARS. 225 

Saturday , March 18th. — This morning we 
began with the Sciarra Gallery, one of the most 
choice in the world. In a single room, not more 
than twenty five feet square, were thirty or forty 
pictures, estimated to be worth three hundred thou- 
sand dollars, comprising masterpieces by Titian, 
Raphael, Guido, Leonardo da Vinci, and others. 
For the celebrated Modesty and Charity of Leo- 
nardo, the size of which is hardly four feet by three, 
the good-humored old keeper told us an English 
nobleman offered fifty thousand dollars. These 
marvels of the pencil teach with glowing emphasis 
that the essence of the Art is beauty. If this be 
a truism, the crowds of prosaic works one daily 
passes justify its reiteration. Thence we went to 
Mount Palatine, to explore the ruins of part of the 
Palace of the Caesars, adjoining the house of Au- 
gustus, which we had already seen. Each of his 
successors for several generations seems to have 
enlarged the imperial residence, until, under Nero, 
it spread over the whole of the Palatine and Caalian 
hills and part of the Esquiline. What we saw to- 
day covers several acres. The habitable part, of 
which there are only left fragments of thick brick 
walls, was built on high arches. The view from 
the top embraces the greater part of the ancient 
and modern cities, extending over the Campagna 
to the mountains. It is now a vegetable garden, 
and where emperors have dined grows a luxuriant 



226 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

crop of artichokes. A bright-looking woman, who 
was peeling onions, and who plucked for us a 
bouquet of hyacinths, told us that she paid for it 
seventy dollars annual rent. From the Palace we 
drove to the tomb of Augustus, where, among other 
bones, we saw the half of a skull which the keeper 
protested was ancient Roman, and was ready to 
protest to be that of Augustus. 

In the afternoon we went to the rooms of Maes, 
a Belgian Artist of talent, and then drove out to 
the church on Monte Mario, whence the view is 
very fine. A lad, who had care of the church, told 
us that in the convent adjoining lived two Domini- 
can friars, there not being means to support more. 
Each of them receives five dollars a month, besides 
twenty cents a day for saying mass, making about 
eleven dollars a month to each for clothing and food. 
A man here can keep his body well covered with 
flesh for ten cents a clay. His meat will be chiefly 
maccaroni, and his drink water, — a good fare 
for longevity. Be it as it may, there is no class 
of people in Italy with fuller skins than the friars. 

In the evening we saw, at about seven o'clock, 
the long bright tail of a comet. 

Sunday, March 19^A. — This morning I heard 
a sermon at the Church of the Jesuits. The sub- 
ject was the perfections of Joseph as husband and 
father, who, the preacher often repeated, had all 
the realities of the matrimonial union without its 



A FRENCH JESUIT PREACHER. 227 

chief function, and performed all the functions of 
a father without having the reality. He enforced, 
happily and with pure feeling, from the example of 
Joseph, the sanctity of the marriage-tie, and the 
supreme obligation of duty. It was a practical, 
animated, sound discourse, which commanded ear- 
nest attention from his audience, that consisted 
of the middle and lower classes, and was very nu- 
merous, filling nearly the whole area of the large 
church. 

In the afternoon we went to hear a celebrated 
French Jesuit preach, at the church called St. 
Louis of the French. In a discourse of more than 
an hour, to which a large, educated auditory lis- 
tened with unwearied attention, the preacher sum- 
med up with skill and eloquence the chief argu- 
ments of the Roman Catholic Church against Prot- 
estantism. In an emphatic and adroit manner he 
presented the best that can be said in favor of the 
unity and infallibility of the Roman Church. He 
laid down that religion could be preserved but by 
one of three means : either, first, by God making a 
separate revelation thereof to each individual man ; 
or, secondly, by his having embodied it in a book, 
which each was to interpret for himself ; or, thirdly, 
by instituting a Church to whose guardianship he 
committed it. After endeavoring to show that the 
third was the only means consistent with the sim- 
plicity of the divine government, he went on to set 



228 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE'. 

forth that Christ established one Church, that that 
Church was, by its nature, origin, and design, in- 
fallible, — and in a brilliant sophistical passage he 
attempted to demonstrate the inherent necessity of 
intolerance towards doctrine, concluding with the 
position that without such a Church there would 
be no faith, no religion. 

What a pitiful piece of work were man if to his 
fellow-man he owed the very enjoyment of his 
highest faculty. How ignoble and parasitical must 
that Jesuit deem his brother-men ! But it is just 
and inevitable that they who by men have been 
unduly exalted should look down upon those who 
have bowed the neck under their yoke. Without 
any direct knowlege of the fact, it might be in- 
ferred that no class of men have a lower opinion 
of mankind than the Romish priesthood. No 
religion without the Church ! Why, the Roman 
and all other churches that have ever existed or 
will ever exist are effects of religion, not its cause, 
— the creatures of man, not his masters, — and, 
as such, obsequious ever to his movements ; suck- 
ing blood when he has been cruel, relentless w T hen 
he has been intolerant, humane when he has 
become humanized ; presumptuous towards his in- 
activity, humble towards his independence ; aristo- 
cratic in one country, democratic in another, — 
here upholding slavery, there denouncing it ; 
always a representative of the temporary condition 



PRIESTCRAFT. 229 

of society. Why were the Catholic priests more 
openly rapacious and lustful before the Reforma- 
tion than since ? Why is the priest in Spain differ- 
ent from the priest in Sweden, or the Catholic 
priest of the United States more true to his chief 
vow than his fellow in Italy ? There is but one 
unity, and that is the universal innateness in man 
of the religious sentiment. The form wherein it 
clothes, the creed wherein it embodies itself, de- 
pend upon civilization, temperament, climate, pol- 
icy ; and to these the priest inevitably fashions 
himself. But as effects reflect often back upon 
their causes, creeds and hierarchies react, with 
more or less power, upon religion itself ; and it is 
a symptom of a baleful influence, and of an un- 
manly passiveness in man, when so degrading a 
doctrine gets to be part of his creed as that he 
owes his religion to his priest. 

To learn what priestcraft is we need not, how- 
ever, go so far as Catholic Italy, although there its 
deformity is the most revolting in Christendom. 
Some very unequivocal exhibitions of it may be 
seen among the Protestant isms of our country, 
notwithstanding that the mass of our population 
is in mental freedom and strength raised above 
that of Europe, and that comparatively, through 
the severance of Church and State, we enjoy relig- 
ious liberty. Priesthood, performing a necessary 
part in human societies, is, like the other institu- 



230 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

tions for the furtherance of man's estate, subject 
under all forms and circumstances to corruptions. 
The benefits resulting from a priesthood, like the 
benefits resulting from a magistracy, are purely 
those of organization. In the earlier stages of 
culture, or when humanity is partially developed, 
priests form a distinct authorized power, which, 
being men, it is of course their tendency to abuse. 
As society through individual culture develops 
itself, this organization becomes more and more 
merged in the general social one. Priests are first 
dropped by the State and then by individuals, and 
the religious element, reincorporated as it were 
into the whole nature, receives its cultivation along 
with the other nobler sentiments of man. Rituals 
and hierarchies are but the forms through which 
for a time it suits religion to express and cherish 
herself; they are transient, only religion is peren- 
nial. Forms, in their healthiest state, waste some- 
what of the substance they are designed to set 
forth. At their birth, they are tainted with insin- 
cerity ; when mature, they grow hypocritical ; and 
in their old age they get to be barefaced false- 
hoods, and then they die. In religion, as in poli- 
tics, and in all things, man becomes weak in pro- 
portion as he surrenders himself to the power or 
guidance of others. This surrender is totally dif- 
ferent from helpful cooperation, as well as from 
reciprocal subordination according to inborn supe- 
riorities. 



THORWALDSEN'S ST. JOHN. 231 

Monday, March 20th. — At Thorwaldsen's stu- 
dio I stood again long before the St. John preach- 
ing in the Wilderness. This is a group of twelve 
parts, ranged in a line declining on either side from 
the central figure, to suit its destination, which is 
the tympanum of a church in Copenhagen. St. 
John, in his left hand a cross, which serves him as 
a staff, and his right raised towards heaven, stands 
in the centre, with a countenance mild and earnest, 
his look and attitude well expressing the solemnity 
of the tidings he proclaims. 

The first figure on his right is a man, apparently 
about thirty, with the left foot on a high stone, and 
one elbow on his knee, his chin resting in his hand. 
His fixed look is not turned up as if to catch the 
falling words of the speaker, but is outward as 
though his mind were busy with something that 
had gone before. Next to him is a group of two 
figures : the first a turbaned man of middle age, 
with hands crossed at his waist, in the simplest 
erect attitude of deep attention, his closely draped 
light body in the most perfect repose, while his 
bearded countenance is intent upon that of St. 
John with the animated expression of one accus- 
tomed to thought, and whose mind is now deeply 
wrought upon by the words he hears. Behind 
him, and gently resting on his shoulder, is a beard- 
less youth, like the elder one before him, who may 
be his father, attentive but passive. The third fig- 



232 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

ure is a mother, half kneeling, behind her a boy 
seven or eight years of age, with chin on his hands 
that are crossed on her right shoulder. The fourth, 
an old man seated, with long beard and turban, — 
a tranquil venerable figure. The fifth, and last to 
the right of St. John, is a youth recumbent, sup- 
porting his upturned head with his left arm. 

The first figure on the left of St. John is a boy 
about fifteen, looking up into his face with half- 
open mouth and a' beaming expression, as if the 
words he was listening to had unlocked his soul. 
Next to him is a middle-aged priest, with both 
hands before his breast resting on a staff. His 
countenance is strong and rugged, and his brows 
are knit as if his mind were in a state of resist- 
ance to what he heard. The third figure is a hun- 
ter. He looks melted by the preacher, and has 
an aspect of devout acquiescence. By a band he 
holds a fine dog, upon which is fixed the attention 
of — the fourth group, two bright children, a boy 
and girl of nine and eight, their faces alive with 
childish pleasure. Behind them, the fifth figure, 
is a female seated, their mother apparently, who is 
restraining before her a third younger child. The 
sixth and last figure is a shepherd, recumbent, with 
open mouth and joyful look. 

This subject is peculiarly fitted to sculpture, 
from the union of perfect bodily repose with men- 
tal animation. The conception, which is the hap- 



WAX HEAD OF TASSA. 233 

piest possible for such a group ; the ease, life, 
correctness, and grace of the figures ; the con- 
trasts in their postures, ages, conditions, sex, ex- 
pression ; the calm power evident in the fertility 
and purity of the invention ; the excellence of the 
execution ; the distribution of the parts, and the 
vivid character of each figure, make this work one 
of the noblest of modern sculpture. 

In the afternoon we went through the Gallery 
of the Vatican. From an unnecessary and ungra- 
cious arrangement, in order to see the pictures, 
you are obliged to walk nearly the whole length 
of the range of galleries in the two stories, a dis- 
tance of more than a mile, so that you are fatigued 
when you come in front of the pictures, where, 
moreover, there are no seats. We went after- 
wards to the church of St. Onofrio, not far from 
St. Peter's. Here I saw a representation in wax 
of the head of Tasso, from a mask taken after 
death. Were there any doubt as to the genuine- 
ness of this head, the cranium were almost suffi- 
cient to dispel it, being just such a one as is fitted 
to the shoulders of an excitable poet. The monks 
keep it in their library. Another treasure they 
possess is a Madonna and child in fresco, by 
Leonardo da Vinci, which, notwithstanding the 
injury of time, breathes forth the inspiration im- 
parted to it by that wonderful genius. Neither 
this, nor the mask of Tasso, both being in the con- 



234 SCEXES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

vent to which the church is attached, can be seen 
by women, except through special permission from 
the Pope. Below in the church is Tasso's tomb. 

Tuesday, March 21st. — At the rooms of Vel- 
lati, an Italian painter of landscapes and hunting- 
pieces, we saw this morning the Magdalen of Cor- 
reggio, recently brought to light, Yellati having 
discovered it under another picture which had been 
painted over it, and which he bought for fifteen 
dollars. With great labor, by means of the point 
of a needle, the upper painting was removed with- 
out injuring the gem beneath it. Its size is about 
fifteen inches by twelve, and the price asked for 
it is five thousand pounds sterling ; but its value 
cannot be counted in money. It is the duplicate 
of the celebrated picture at Dresden. In the same 
rooms was a fine landscape by Rembrandt. 

In the Piazza del Popolo is a meagre exhibi- 
tion of pictures, the best painters always drawing 
amateurs to their private rooms. We went after- 
wards to the Farnesian Gardens, which are entered 
from the Forum, to see remains of the palaces of 
Nero and Caligula and of the House of Augustus. 
We groped down into the Baths of Li via. We 
walked through the Forum to the Colosseum, and 
afterwards in the Borghese Gardens. 

Wednesday, March 22d. — This morning we saw 
the Cenci again. What a gift of genius, to repro- 
duce such a face in all its tremulous life ! With a 



THE MOSES OF MICHAEL ANGELO. 235 

deep, awful, innocent look, it seems to peer into 
your soul and pray you for sympathy. Doubt has 
been thrown upon its genuineness. If it be a 
creation and not a portrait, it is the more wonder- 
ful. Its character is so perfectly in unison with 
the mysterious heart-rending story of Beatrice 
Cenci, that, had it been discovered long years 
after her tragic end and without any clue to its 
origin, it might and probably would have been 
appropriated to her. We drove afterwards to the 
church of St. Peter in Chains, to see for the second 
time the Moses of Michael Angelo. I observed 
to-day, that, with the instinct of genius, (in the 
heads of the antique the ear is further forward,) 
he has placed the ear far back, which heightens 
the intellectual character of the head. In gazing 
at this powerful statue again, I felt that in Art it 
is only beauty that ensures constancy. The Moses 
is grand and imposing ; but one does not look for- 
ward to a third visit with that anticipation of grow- 
ing enjoyment with which one goes back to the 
Apollo or the Laocoon. Liberate the Laocoon 
from the constraints of force and pain, and it would 
stand before you a body preeminent for beauty and 
justness of proportion. On the other hand, sup- 
pose the body a common one, and the work sinks 
to a revolting mimicry of corporeal suffering. 

One who resides long in Rome is liable to be 
sucked back into the past. Behind him is an 



236 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

ocean of movement and thought, out of which rise 
countless fragments and monuments, that daily 
tempt him to exploration. A man might here lean 
his whole being against antiquity and find it a life- 
long support. The present becomes but a starting- 
point whence he would set out on voyages into the 
past. Walked out at the Porta Pia. 

Thursday, March 23d. — This morning we went 
to the Villa Negroni, the neglected grounds of 
which are in great part occupied by a vegetable 
garden. The sun was just enough veiled by thin 
clouds to make walking agreeable, and although 
the villa is far within the walls, we strolled for half 
an hour over twenty or thirty acres of artichokes, 
onions, and peas, enjoying a wide sweep of the 
mountains. We then went to see Cardinal Fesch's 
gallery, containing altogether twenty thousand pic- 
tures. Exempt from the officious promptings of a 
cicerone, we lounged from room to room, choosing 
for ourselves, and appealing to the voluminous cat- 
alogue to back our vision or resolve doubts. After 
one has obtained, by familiarity with galleries, 
some knowledge of the best masters, it is delight- 
ful to be let loose in this way upon a new collec- 
tion. This one is celebrated for Flemish and 
Dutch pictures. 

Great part of the afternoon we passed among 
the statues of the Vatican. The Perseus looks as 
if Canova had studied the antique more than nature. 



ART AND NATURE. 237 

The one sole mistress in Art being Nature, all that 
the artist can gain from the works of others is the 
best mode of seizing the spirit of the one common 
model, of compassing her beauties, so that he shall 
be able to reproduce what shall be at once ideal 
and natural. Not to imitate their forms, but to 
extract from them how their authors imitated the 
best of Nature so truly, should be the aim of the 
young sculptor in scanning the Apollo or Laocoon. 
If he can make the wondrous work before him 
reveal the process of the worker, then he can profit 
by the example. If he cannot, then he has not 
the innate gifts of a high artist. But this process 
of the great masters he will not only fail to detect, 
by copying the forms that have come from human 
hands, but by such servility (for it is servility, be 
the model Phidias himself) he weakens his original 
powers, and gradually disables himself from stand- 
ing up face to face before his living mistress. To 
the young sculptor, the antique should be an 
armory where he can fortify his native powers for 
the loving conflict he has to wage with vigorous 
beaming Nature. In the Perseus, it is apparent 
the free play of the artist's mind was under check. 
You behold the result of fine powers in partial ser- 
vitude. Nevertheless, both it and the boxers 
beside it are noble works. I went next to the 
Capitol, whence, after gazing at the Gladiator, and 
examining the busts of Brutus and Caesar, I walked 



238 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

down into the Forum about the base of the Capitol, 
among piles of broken columns. 

Friday, March 24th. — This morning I paced 
St. Peter's to get for myself its dimensions. 
Walking without effort, I counted two hundred and 
sixty steps as the length of the great nave, thirty- 
seven as its width, and one hundred and eighty as 
that of the transept. I counted twenty-six altars. 
Its statues, mostly of 'gigantic size, and its mosaic 
pictures, I did not undertake to count. It is 
reputed to have cost about fifty millions of dol- 
lars. 

Do not painting and sculpture require for their 
excellence a predominance of the sensuous over 
the meditative ? The Catholic religion, the parent, 
or, at least, the foster-mother of modern painting, 
appeals largely to the senses ; and the Grecian 
mythology, the nurse of ancient sculpture, still 
more so. The present tendency is towards the 
spiritual and rational ; and the foremost people of 
Europe, the English, possessing the richest written 
poetry in the world, is poor in the plastic Arts. 
The great features of the German, English, and 
American mind, are deep religious and moral 
emotions, the fruits of whose alliance with reason 
are far-reaching ideas and wide-embracing princi- 
ples, which sway the thoughts and acts of men, 
but which can be but faintly represented in bodily 



THE MINERVA CHURCH. 239 

This sounds well enough, but great modern 
names refute it. Your fair looking edifice of logic 
proves but a house of paper before the breath of 
great facts. 

Saturday, March 25th. — We went to look at 
the continuation of Cardinal Fesch's collection of 
pictures in a neighboring palace ; but all the best 
are in the first, which we saw a few days since. 
The keeper unlocked a large room, in which pic- 
tures were piled away in solid masses one against 
the other. I noted No. 16,059 on one of them. 
Fourteen hundred dollars a year rent is paid for 
the rooms the whole collection occupies. — We 
then went to the Minerva Church to witness a re- 
ligious ceremony, in which the Pope is carried on 
the shoulders of his attendants. We got into the 
church in time to have a good view of him seated 
in a rich throne-like chair, which rose just above 
the dense crowd, borne rocking along, as on a dis- 
turbed sea of human heads. Carried on either 
side of him were two large fans of peacock's feath- 
ers, which might be called the sails of the golden 
vessel. We afterwards walked in the Gregorian 
Gardens, a public walk near the Colosseum, be- 
tween the Caelian and Palatine Hills. — In the 
afternoon we drove out to see the Torlonia Villa. 

Canova's statuary wants what may be called the 
under movement, which Thorwaldsen's has, and 
which is by no means given by pronouncing the 



240 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

muscles, but by a union of sympathy for vital forms 
with clean firm manipulation. In Powers this 
union is more intimate than in any modern sculptor 
that I have seen. 

Sunday, March 2Qth. — We walked this morn- 
ing on the Pincian Hill, and in the afternoon drove 
three miles out of the Porta Pia to a Roman ruin, 
whence there is a fine view of the mountains and 
over the Campagna all round. Behind us was 
Rome, and stretching out from it over the plain 
towards the mountains were the aqueducts. 

In Italy, the past is a load chained to the feet 
of the present. The people drags after it, like a 
corpse, the thought, feeling, act, of by-gone gen- 
erations. Tradition comes down, like the current, 
through a narrow strait, behind which is an ocean. 
Here, more than in most parts of old Europe, the 
health-giving transformations go on languidly ; the 
old is not consumed to give place to the hourly 
created new. The dead and effete is in the way 
of the quick and refreshing. Hence, languor and 
irregularity in the currents of life, causing in the 
body politic obstructions and stoppages, and all 
sorts of social, religious, and political dyspepsias, 
congestions, rheumatisms, constipations. 

Monday, March 21th.. — Returned with re- 
newed enjoyment to Thorwaldsen's studio. Natu- 
ralness and ease are his characteristics. He has 
not a very high ideal of beauty, and seems to avoid 



FRASCATL 241 

the nude, which is the severest test of the artist. 
Thence we went to the Church of St. Lorenzo, 
in Lucina, where a fine voice was singing. To 
strive, by such factitious ceremonies as those of 
the Romish worship, to symbolize the divine, is a 
degradation of the holy that is in us. It is sum- 
moning the solemn spirits of the soul to take part 
in a fantastic pageant of the senses. — We walked 
afterwards in the Gregorian Gardens, and on the 
ruins of the Palace of the Caesars. Thence to 
look once more at the marvels of the Sciarra Gal- 
lery. — In the afternoon, on coming out of Craw- 
ford's studio, we drove over the river to St. Peter's. 
Tuesday ) March 2St7i. — We set out at nine for 
Frascati. Three miles from the St. John's Gate 
we passed under an aqueduct, still used, and near 
the erect ruins of another. The Campagna, with- 
out trees or enclosures, and almost without houses, 
is much less level than it looks from the heights in 
Rome. We passed several shepherds with their 
flocks, and parties of peasants ploughing with large, 
long-horned, long-legged, meek, white oxen. The 
plough had one upright handle, and by this the 
men supported their weight on it, for the purpose 
of turning up a deeper furrow of the dark soil. 
As we drew near to Frascati, the Alban mountains, 
which from Rome present themselves in a compact 
cluster, broke up into separate peaks, the hillsides 
covered with olive-trees, which looked darker and 



242 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

more leafy than I ever saw them, and villas with 
their wooded grounds shining out distinctly. From 
Frascati, which is not half-way up the range of 
mountains, you have a clear view of Koine, twelve 
miles distant, and of the Mediterranean. Immedi- 
ately after arriving, we set out for Tusculuin, which 
lies almost two miles higher up, near the summit 
of one of the peaks. Before we got half-way, 
rain began to fall, and the sky was entirely over- 
cast when we reached the ruins, consisting of an 
amphitheatre and part of the walls of the ancient 
city of Tusculum. Descending, we were glad to 
take shelter in Cicero's house, which is on the other 
side of the ridge. What is left of it, is six or 
eight deep arched rooms in a row, without direct 
communication with one another, and all pointing 
south on a passage-way or portico. My imagina- 
tion refused to bring Cicero before me otherwise 
than as looking out from his arches impatiently on 
a rainy clay. In a hard shower we descended to 
the tavern, and after dinner drove rapidly back to 
Rome. 

Wednesday, March 29th. — What is called the 
bust of young Augustus, in the Vatican, is much 
like Napoleon when he was General. We walked 
round the Rotunda, where are the Perseus of Ca- 
nova, the Antinous, the Laocoon, and the Apollo. 
What a company! and what a privilege it is to 
behold them. We drove afterwards to the Colos- 



SUNSET FROM THE PINCIAN. 243 

seum, and for the first time ascended among the 
arches. Its vastness and massive grandeur never 
cease to astonish me. 

In the afternoon, when we had looked at the 
pictures in the Academy of St. Luc, we drove to 
the Pincian Hill at five. The whole heaven was 
strewn with fragments of a thunder-storm. Through 
them the hue of the sky was unusually brilliant, 
and along the clear western horizon of a pearly 
green. Standing at the northern extremity of the 
hill, we had, to the south, the maze of pinnacles, 
cupolas, towers, columns, obelisks, that strike up 
out of the wide expanse of mellow building ; to the 
right, the sun and St. Peter's ; and, to the left, a 
rural view into the grounds of the Borghese Villa, 
where, over a clump of lofty pines, lay the darkest 
remnants of the storm, seemingly resting on their 
broad flat summits. The gorgeous scene grew 
richer each moment that we gazed, till the whole 
city and its fleecy canopy glowed in purple. We 
walked slowly towards the great stairway, and 
paused on its top as the sun was sinking below the 
horizon. It was an Italian sunset after a storm, 
with Rome for the foreground. 

As, after returning to our lodging, I sat in the 
bland twilight, full of the feeling produced by such 
a spectacle, in such a spot and atmosphere, from 
the ante-room came the sound of a harp from fin- 
gers that were moved by the soul for music, which 



244 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

is almost as common here as speech. After play- 
ing two sweet airs, it ceased : it had come unbidden 
and unannounced, and so it went. This was wanted 
to complete the day, although before it began I did 
not feel the want of anything. There are rare 
moments of heaven on earth, which, but for our 
perversity, might be frequent hours, and sanctify 
and lighten each day, so full is Nature of gifts and 
blessings, were the heart kept open to them. But 
we close our hearts with pride and ambition, and 
all kinds of greeds and selfishness, and try to be 
content with postponing Heaven to beyond the 
grave. 

Thursday, March SOth. — We visited this morn- 
ing the Hospital of St. Michael, an immense estab- 
lishment for the support and instruction of orphans, 
and an asylum for aged poor. It is divided into 
four compartments : for aged men, of whom there 
are now one hundred and twenty-five ; for aged 
women, one hundred and twenty-five ; for boys, 
two hundred and twenty ; and for girls, two hun- 
dred and seventy-five ; making altogether seven 
hundred and forty-five, as the present number of 
its inmates. We saw a woman one hundred and 
three years old, with health and faculties good. 
The boys are taught trades, and the liberal arts, 
and are entitled to the half of the product of their 
work, which is laid up for them, and serves as a 
capital to start with when they leave the institution 



HOSPITAL OF ST. MICHAEL. 245 

at the age of twenty ; besides which, each one 
receives, on quitting, thirty dollars for the same 
purpose. The girls weave and work with the 
needle, and, if they marry, receive one hundred 
dollars dower, and two hundred if they go into a 
convent. They, as well as the boys, are taught 
reading, writing, arithmetic, and vocal music. The 
superintendent, who was throughout exceedingly 
obliging and affable, let us hear several pieces of 
music, admirably executed by a number of the 
boys. 

The income of this institution, from foundations 
made chiefly by former popes, is twenty-eight 
thousand dollars, to which is added upwards of five 
thousand paid by some of those admitted into its 
walls, or by their patrons. The arrangements and 
administration seem to be judicious. Order, indus- 
try, and contentment were visible in all the com- 
partments. It is a noble institution, which does 
honor to Rome. 

In the afternoon we visited the Villa Ludovisi, 
in olden time the garden of Sallust. Among sev- 
eral fine antique statues, that have been dug up in 
the grounds, is a magnificent colossal head of Juno. 
I afterwards walked home from the Colosseum, in 
the warm spring air, taking a look on the way at 
the Moses of Michael Angelo. 

Friday, March 31s£. — Through narrow lanes, 
enclosed by high garden- walls, we walked this 



246 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

morning on Mount Aventine. In the afternoon 
we drove out to the grotto and grove of Egeria. 
At the grotto, where is the fountain, they pretend 
to show the stump of a column of the original por- 
tico, and the trunk of a statue of Numa Porapilius, 
in whose day there were neither porticos nor stat- 
ues. From this spot there is a fine view towards 
Frascati and the hills. On the way, we stopped 
at a church without the walls, where a friar showed 
a marble slab, indented with two footprints, which 
he said were made by Jesus Christ when he quitted 
St. Peter, to whom he appeared to rebuke St. Peter 
for deserting his post at Rome. The impressions 
are rudely cut, and the toes of the feet are all 
nearly square, but they nevertheless probably keep 
the poor friar and some of his brethren in food and 
fuel the year round. 

The ancient sculptors had an advantage over the 
modern, in the profusion of poetical subjects ; for 
every deity of their prolific mythology is poetical, 
that is, unites in itself all the perfections of a class, 
and stands as the ideal representative or symbol 
of wants, desires, or ideas. The modern artist is 
tasked to find individuals that have a generic char- 
acter or significance. The defect in sacred sub- 
jects is, that they must be. draped, and thus do 
not admit of the highest achievement in sculpture : 
which is, to exhibit the human body in its fullest 
beauty of form and expression. 



BENEATH THE DOME OF ST. PETERS. 247 

Saturday, April 1st. — In the morning we vis- 
ited the rooms of Mr. Rosseter and Mr. Terry, 
two young American painters of promise, and 
walked about the Colosseum. After taking a last 
look at the beautiful resplendent St. Michael of 
Guido in the Chapel of the Capuchins, we drove to 
see the drawing of the lottery, which takes place 
every Saturday at noon in the Square of Monte 
Citorio. From a balcony, where priests presided, 
the numbers were drawn to the sound of music, 
the Square well covered with people, mostly of the 
working-classes. In the afternoon, after taking 
another look at Vallati's Correggio, we walked on 
the Pincian Hill. 

Sunday, April 2d. — It is four o'clock in the 
afternoon. Seated against the huge base of a 
pilaster, beneath the dome of St. Peter's, I have 
taken out my pencil to note down what is passing 
around me. In front, near by, directly under the 
cupola, in the centre of the church, is the great 
altar, beneath which in the vaults is the tomb of 
St. Peter. The steps that lead down to it are 
enclosed by a marble balustrade, round which burn 
unceasingly a row of brazen lamps. At this altar 
service is performed only by the Pope himself or 
a cardinal. Round these lights is a favorite spot 
for worshippers ; there is now kneeling a circle of 
various classes. People are walking, lounging, or 
chatting, or gazing at monuments and pictures. 



248 SCENES AND THOUGHTS IN EUROPE. 

Across the great nave, nearly opposite to me, is a 
little crowd about St. Peter's statue, kissing one 
after the other his bronze toe. Yonder is a knot 
of soldiers. A group of three, the middle one a 
priest, is passing me in lively chat. A few yards 
to my left, another priest is on his knees ; his lips 
move rapidly ; nor are his eyes idle, nor his nose, 
which he occupies with snuff. Here come a couple 
of unkempt artisans, laughing. Yonder, a white 
poodle is rolling himself on the marble floor, and a 
black cur is trotting up to interrogate him. From 
under one of the great arches is issuing a proces- 
sion of boys, young acolytes. They crowd up to 
St. Peter's statue, kiss the toe, pass on, kneel for 
a few moments before the illuminated sanctuary, 
and then disappear in the distance. Not far off 
stand three priests in animated talk. Across the 
transept, shines down obliquely through a lofty 
arch an immense band of illuminated dust, denot- 
ing the height of a western window. I raise my 
eyes towards the dome ; the gigantic mosaic fig- 
ures on its rich concave are dwarfed like fir-trees 
on a mountain. Half-way down the great nave, 
people are standing or kneeling a little closer, for 
service is going on in one of the side-altars, and 
vespers are about to be sung in a chapel opposite. 
Many hundreds of visitors and worshippers, mingled 
together, are in the church, but merely dot thinly 
the area whereon tens of thousands might stand 
at ease. 



FAREWELL TO THE VATICAN. 249 

Monday, April 3d. — Mounted in the morning 
to the roof and to the top of the dome of St. 
Peter's. What a pulpit whence to preach a ser- 
mon on the lusts of power and gold ! 

In the afternoon we took farewell in the Vatican 
of the Apollo and his inspired companions. In 
the evening we went to hear an improvisatrice, 
Madame Taddei. When it is considered that this 
class of performers study for years their business, 
and that the Italian language runs so readily into 
verse, the performance loses its wonder. More- 
over, the imagination has such scope, that they 
can and do spin off a subject very loosely. 

Wednesday, April 5t7i, 1843. — We left Rome 
at ten in the forenoon. The day was fine, and our 
faces were turned homeward, whence, across the 
sea, blew a fresh breeze as we approached Civita 
Vecchia. 



THE END. 



